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How will the Affordable Healthcare Act, otherwise known as Obamacare affect you? Well, everyone's situation is different of course so it will affect everyone differently to some extent. Here are a few things most of us in Arizona can count on. Higher premiums and in many cases much higher premiums. A few reasons for higher premiums are:
1. Maternity coverage whether you need it or want it or not. All plans now have maternity coverage automatically included, it's no longer an option like it used to be. So even if you are done having children, you are paying a higher premium because this is a mandated coverage in all plans.
2. Guaranteed issue to everyone. Historically, health insurance companies have been able to individually medically underwrite each risk to determine if it made sense to offer insurance to someone. Now, the Affordable Healthcare Act requires all insurance carriers to guarantee all people health insurance with no pre-existing limitations or exclusions. Further, a carrier may not increase your premium because of a pre-existing condition, such as heart disease or cancer. While this sounds good as a talking point, certainly a reasonable person would understand that if an insurance carrier is going to be forced to cover everyone regarldess of their illness, then rates will go up. My question to the sick people, and I am sad if you can't get insurance, is why did you wait to purchase insurance until you were sick? Now to put this into perspective, if you had no home owners insurance and your house was on fire, do you believe an insurance company should be forced to sale you a policy when they know they are going to have a huge claim? No, its preposterous to think that. I must ask the question, why is the government telling private companies how to run? It basically is doing just that because they are telling these carriers if you don't comply, you can't sell insurance any longer. If they do it to insurance carriers, maybe your business is next. Where does it stop? If the government wants to create a healthplan and compete in the market I'm all for it; I just don't like them dictating to other private businesses how they must run their business, that is not freedom.
3. Taxes and Fees; The AHA includes many new taxes and fees that you would not otherwise have if the government was not involved.
Another thing you can expect with the Affordable Healthcare Act is less access to doctors and longer wait times for doctors visits and procedures. Many doctors are planning on retiring early because they don't want to deal with the bureaucracy of the AHA. Less people are going into the field of medicine because there is less money to be made and therefore less incentive. This also means the best and brightest students are choosing other careers before being a medical practitioner because there is better money elsewhere. Our quality of care will go down. This is another consequence of this law.
So to summarize here are the result of the Affordable Healthcare Act as I see it:
1. Higher Premiums
2. Less access to medical care
3. Lower quality medical care
Our insurance system did have issues before the AHA was passed; there is no question. The question is, does the AHA help it or make it worse? There are better solutions to healthcare than government interference.