HuskerBoard

That's like blaming the guy that pulled 3 people out of a burning car for the 2 people that died while 20 other people stood there watching.

The useless fu#*$, but primarily Americans and American small businesses, had this bill shoved down their throats without those in power even caring about the collateral damage of what was in the bill. It was one of the major mistakes during obama's terms. There needed to be change, but what we have is worse than where we were at.

That the ACA wound up where it was at and is not instead a more affordable solution that provides a net social benefit to society is most certainly a reflection of a broken system. We all knew it was a flawed bill-- Obama wanted to take a much more decisive step towards multi-payer with a public option-- but the system regurgitated what we have now after a trip to the ole haggling table.

So obvious, something needs fixed now, or we're going to keep seeing more insurers drop out...

And premiums continue to rise.

The problem is, not everyone wants to fix it. A whole party would rather sit around with their thumbs up their a## and watch it go belly up rather than fix the legislation. For the longest time, they proposed no reasonable alternative. Now they're ready to offer a cookie cutter GOP plan with numerous flaws of its own that I could sit here and tick off by rote. Why not fix the ACA? Because your team didn't devise it?

Read an interesting solution tonight. Obviously profit margins are so awful for insurers and thus premiums continue to rise because they're paying too much for sick folks who need the insurance and don't have enough healthy folks in the system.

Why not raise the penalty for not having a plan? If you continue to let the penalty be a joke compared to actually buying insurance, people will skimp to save money.

If they can't do that, wouldn't a large influx...

of healthy people hit the markets?

I agree Savage, the ACA made it worse. The thing they "solved" was minor in comparison to how they made it worse. It was broken and they broke it more. But there is no high ground for those who did nothing. If it gets much more expensive, nobody will be able to afford it and the providers, pharmaceutical and insurance will all find themselves out of jobs. It's like society in general, the group of people paying keeps getting smaller. It's not sustainable.

Yes dudeguyy, the penalty needs to be the same amount as actually purchasing the insurance. That would help immensely but there are other cost drivers that need to be controlled. I really don't see a solution that anyone will be happy with.

It's not insurance if they're forcing people to pay for something against their will. Insurance is risk protection, it's essentially a tax on younger healthy people, primarily males. The good and bad of raising the dependency age to 26 is that it allows young adults to have another 2 years of covergae, but the govt knows they can get the money from the parents of those individuals not buying their own plan.

The ACA also stagnates small businesses from making the move to grow when one additional employee adds tens of thousands of dollars in costs to the business, not to mention the time wasted on BS paperwork involved to document their standing.

The U.S. health care system is broken. Totally broken. (Ours went up too. Way up.)

Healthcare isn't that hard to figure out. Every other first-world nation and most 2nd- and 3rd-world nations have national health coverage. We don't because hospitals & insurance providers are making billions off of citizens. Congress won't fix it because they're getting campaign contributions from these companies.

I'm not saying our system isn't broke but have you ever been to a hospital in a third world country knapplc? Yikes! I don't want the health plan they have.

Point is you don't go broke because you have a medical emergency in those countries. Healthcare is the #1 cause of bankruptcy for American households.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/why-americans-are-drowning-in-medical-debt/381163/

the plan is to wreck soetorocare so there is no alternative but to implement single payer...just watch

We (well some of us who had good insurance and money) used to have good healthcare in this country. We will soon be like the rest of the world, rationed lower quality care for the masses and high quality very expensive private care for the very rich only. I don't see any other possibilities.

"The rest of the world" doesn't have healthcare like that, JJ. When's the last time you visited a doctor outside the US?

One other major problem is that our doctors are married to the pharmaceutical paradigm of just writing a scrip rather than focusing on holistic, preventative medical practices.

We're also incredibly sick because of this. BUT, we can empower ourselves to take care of our health and be a part of the solution.

That's noted in the last link I provided, Undone. American medical care is too much a business and too little about care. That's why costs are skyrocketing.