Is This a Good Idea To Reform The The Affordable Care Act?

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   Rock_njposted 7 years ago

   Is This a Good Idea To Reform The The Affordable Care Act?
   
   Here is the idea.  Make The Affordable Care Act require states to set up cooperatives in which small to medium sized businesses can join together to bargain with health insurers to get the best health care premiums.  In healthcare, size matters when it comes to costs, and 1,000s of small to medium sized businesses acting together through a cooperative to obtain health insurance will surely save them money.

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2. 60

   kbdressmanposted 7 years ago

   That could be a step in the right direction as one of the complaints against the ACA is that employees are having to shoulder a bigger load of their health care costs than they were previously.  However, the increased deductibles and out of care costs are just as much of a problem as the increased premiums.  (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won … are-costs/)
   
   One of the reasons the ACA has been unsuccessful is because it's cheaper for many healthy people to pay the fees imposed on those who don't have insurance than it is to pay the high premium costs.  This means that those who have chronic illnesses are a greater percentage of insured Americans which is pushing premium costs higher and higher.
   
   Another interesting fact is that there are millions of Americans who don't have insurance who would qualify for federal subsidies if they applied.  I don't know if that's because even the subsidized premiums are too expensive, because the online system can be complicated to fill out, because people don't know they may qualify, laziness, or a combination of the above.   
   
   I don't think that health insurance reform is the only thing we need to do to fix health care costs in our country.  We need to focus on preventative medicine and healthy living as well.  The problem is, it's easy to point fingers at health related problems (insurance related or not), but it's harder to write effective legislation.

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3. 81

   jackclee lmposted 7 years ago

   Unfortunately, this discussion should have been done by our Congress in 2010 before the enactment of the ACA. Now it is more expensive and we have wasted 6 years in a failed experiment. It is back to the drawing board. Hopefully we will do it right this time around.

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      Rock_njposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I agree.  Hard to believe they didn't include this sort of cooperative for small to medium businesses in the original ACA. It's something that businesses on the smaller side need, buying power in the healthcare marketplace.

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