A friend on the exchange is going from $750/mo to $950, then has a $9000 deductible on top of that. This is a basic catastrophic plan. I am not sure whose fault it is things got this bad, but I hope 2026 will bring some relief.
As a retired doc I remember when the ACA passed and patients were so happy to be able to have tests and procedures they needed to have done but could not afford. I'm concerned over any action that would weaken rather than strengthen it or worse yet leave people without any health insurance which was so common before ACA.
As a pastor and former hospital chaplain I saw people before ACA who had little income and no isurance waiting with diabetic infections until they were so sick they had to be taken to hospital and have limbs amputated, attempted suicides who had no access to mental health care, strokes from never having their high blood pressure treated, and who died from cancers for which good treatments existed. I for one taxpayer, am happy to have a chunk of my taxes increaase health and well-being among my poorer neighbors. Better than paying to blow up boats and send troops into US cities or build detention camps.
Oh, so much to unpack here on this important aspect of healthcare in US. First of all we need to be hearing from those with real experience that includes breadth and depth. A forty something doc does not have that by accident of birth no matter how dedicated. The real beginning of this mess really started with intro to "managed medicine" or what I call "mismanaged medicine", i.e HMO's back around the early to mid 1980's. Those who were practicing medicine (medical care) already by then have a frame of reference for comparison up to now that is invaluable because they LIVED what it used to be like. That's when we began to see docs lose autonomy and the ability to hold private practices. Now it's almost impossible. With the onslaught of CEO's power who often had little on the ground experience of actual medical practice not only gaining power over the true experts/practitioners (like yourself), but making disproportionate $$$ over the docs and nurses, the true professional practitioners. We saw medical costs go up exorbitantly. As well as insurance costs. And quality of healthcare went way down. 2. When we changed a valuable service to emphasize profit-first for a few, in current discussions like this we forget that we have to look at the WHOLE MARKET of healthcare that includes gov and private because one impacts the other. That's why we are currently seeing huge increases in private insurance premiums and deductibles as coverage and quality of care goes down. That will always be the case until we remove all the middle men and consider single payer. (And don't even get me started on the gov legislators that fund their campaigns and future jobs through med company lobbyists. And that includes GOP and Dems.) 3. We must include the voices of the largest group of Americans most seriously impacted by this long term failing healthcare system...the PATIENTS which in most of these discussions is almost entirely left out. For us this is more than just a discussion about our profession though it certainly impacts our professions and how we work. It is our day to day existence, quality of life, how we raise our families, how we contribute to community, and often literally our very survival. We cannot write our own RX's, do our own surgeries, conduct our own tests. There are no unions that protect us, no professional associations that lobby for us in meaningful ways or gain us entrance into the places that make the powerful decisions that effect our lives. As we move further into this increasingly de-personalized med system, we are increasingly blocked from speaking with human beings with any medical training. That alone has increased the vast amounts of lost billable hours in our PAYING JOBS spent on the phone on hold, waiting for call-backs, scheduling doc visits (usually at their convenience, not ours), little communication between specialists and GP's, more medical errors, and poor follow-through. All this and more as we (patients) also see the stress our practitioners who do care are under as the CEO's treat them like employees in mass production biz or the fast food industry.
A friend on the exchange is going from $750/mo to $950, then has a $9000 deductible on top of that. This is a basic catastrophic plan. I am not sure whose fault it is things got this bad, but I hope 2026 will bring some relief.
As a retired doc I remember when the ACA passed and patients were so happy to be able to have tests and procedures they needed to have done but could not afford. I'm concerned over any action that would weaken rather than strengthen it or worse yet leave people without any health insurance which was so common before ACA.
As a pastor and former hospital chaplain I saw people before ACA who had little income and no isurance waiting with diabetic infections until they were so sick they had to be taken to hospital and have limbs amputated, attempted suicides who had no access to mental health care, strokes from never having their high blood pressure treated, and who died from cancers for which good treatments existed. I for one taxpayer, am happy to have a chunk of my taxes increaase health and well-being among my poorer neighbors. Better than paying to blow up boats and send troops into US cities or build detention camps.
Oh, so much to unpack here on this important aspect of healthcare in US. First of all we need to be hearing from those with real experience that includes breadth and depth. A forty something doc does not have that by accident of birth no matter how dedicated. The real beginning of this mess really started with intro to "managed medicine" or what I call "mismanaged medicine", i.e HMO's back around the early to mid 1980's. Those who were practicing medicine (medical care) already by then have a frame of reference for comparison up to now that is invaluable because they LIVED what it used to be like. That's when we began to see docs lose autonomy and the ability to hold private practices. Now it's almost impossible. With the onslaught of CEO's power who often had little on the ground experience of actual medical practice not only gaining power over the true experts/practitioners (like yourself), but making disproportionate $$$ over the docs and nurses, the true professional practitioners. We saw medical costs go up exorbitantly. As well as insurance costs. And quality of healthcare went way down. 2. When we changed a valuable service to emphasize profit-first for a few, in current discussions like this we forget that we have to look at the WHOLE MARKET of healthcare that includes gov and private because one impacts the other. That's why we are currently seeing huge increases in private insurance premiums and deductibles as coverage and quality of care goes down. That will always be the case until we remove all the middle men and consider single payer. (And don't even get me started on the gov legislators that fund their campaigns and future jobs through med company lobbyists. And that includes GOP and Dems.) 3. We must include the voices of the largest group of Americans most seriously impacted by this long term failing healthcare system...the PATIENTS which in most of these discussions is almost entirely left out. For us this is more than just a discussion about our profession though it certainly impacts our professions and how we work. It is our day to day existence, quality of life, how we raise our families, how we contribute to community, and often literally our very survival. We cannot write our own RX's, do our own surgeries, conduct our own tests. There are no unions that protect us, no professional associations that lobby for us in meaningful ways or gain us entrance into the places that make the powerful decisions that effect our lives. As we move further into this increasingly de-personalized med system, we are increasingly blocked from speaking with human beings with any medical training. That alone has increased the vast amounts of lost billable hours in our PAYING JOBS spent on the phone on hold, waiting for call-backs, scheduling doc visits (usually at their convenience, not ours), little communication between specialists and GP's, more medical errors, and poor follow-through. All this and more as we (patients) also see the stress our practitioners who do care are under as the CEO's treat them like employees in mass production biz or the fast food industry.