What is wrong with Obamacare?
Being someone who just signed up for Obama Care less than 72 hours ago, I feel like I can answer this question accurately. My biggest complaint comes from the Health Insurance Marketplace website, otherwise known as Health Care dot gov. People who do not have coverage are asked to give their information to a third party website which in turn will “find” you a plan that matches your income (of course) and your dependents.When I signed up through healthcare dot gov, I was given multiple “offers” from 2–3 well known insurance companies all of which someone making $50k a year would not be able to afford. When I say I make $50,000, I take home less than $1,400 bi-weekly and most in-network plans were offering basic to premium packages ranging from $180 to $320 with no dependents.The deadline was on January 15th, and I decided the hell with it, and went ahead and signed up for the most affordable plan. I choose Kaiser Permanente and decided to pay the $182 a month. My biggest question is not for ObamaCare necessarily, but for Kaiser. How did they decide for someone who makes $50,000 a year (I don’t), should pay $182 a month for basic?I personally feel the number is too high, and prior to me being kicked off of my employers plan, I was paying a little less than $150 for both health and dental. But, if I decided to not pay it, I would be footed with a disgusting emergency room bill if I ever needed to go for the rest of my life.Without Obama Care, I would be forced to pay an emergency bill with a discount if anything were to ever happen.While this may be an extreme, a user on Facebook shared her bill with us because she did not have coverage. Ultimately, while I am against making anything mandatory, I think insurance companies need to lower the cost of health insurance, or at least take out “affordable.” The numbers are fixed, and it seems like the bigger beneficiaries are stockholders, and drug lord conglomerates. Yet, while I complain and I am still at the mercy of insurance companies.At this point, I would rather die than to be stuck with paying off $26k (not really).
Why didn't Obama just try to enact a single payer healthcare system?
To a certain extent, the healthcare system reflects the culture of a country.In Britain and Scandinavia a welfare state is not questioned. Healthcare is a right and the state provides it. Not all countries view things this way, several have basic healthcare cover provided by the state along with compulsory insurance, this gives people an element of choice and an element of free market.Countries with powerful insurers adopt this, notably France, and to a lesser extent Germany.Given the US has a distrust of government and a large lobby for the insurance industry a single payer system would never take hold.Americans are used to the idea that the government shouldn't provide any benefit to them. There is also natural American optimism that bad things don't happen.Politically the US has lived with an absurdly expensive system for 40 years. Some people just don't like any change.Finally the US has a media that is largely privately funded and allowed to print lies, seeing as insurers pay for adverts and the government doesn't, it makes market sense for absurdly biased ramping up of fears to continue.