The government included a provision where "certain companies that can prove that they will have healthcare costs RISE and employees will lose coverage under obamacare get a one time 1 year exemption"... this one time exemption is to last conveniently after these midterm elections.
Currently McDonnalds and the NY Teachers union have each gotten an example for the their ~300K Employees, with a bunch of other companies having the same for a total of 1 million employees.
Most companies are either too small to have the means or too callous to care enough to get such an exemption, so you are seeing the first round of people losing coverage due to increasing costs due to the inefficiency of communism.
When the exemption ends (forever) next year you will see a new round, as teachers and McDonald employees and others all suddenly lose their their healthcare due to obama care.
The most amazing thing to me, is that you point at the CAUSE of the problem and say "This is the solution".
Those growing number of american's with insurance premium of 1000/mo because of disease? that is because that is how much it costs to TREAT disease. What you don't get is that under socialized care:
1. Cost per individual goes UP due to increased waste, mismanagement, and decreasing size of care (practices going under due to the extra load of compliance with a 2800 page bill, that costs money, you need a team that has read it and complies with it).
2. Individuals are simply denied care in order to keep costs down. (medicare and medicaid deny more then twice as much coverage then any private care; and in single payer countries people are denied care all the time)
Is it SAD that people get insane costs of care when they are very sick? yes.
Do I wish they could get all the treatment they needed for free, forever? yes.
Does a socialized system give them that? no, it actually makes things worse for them
You see, EVERY person, as they get older, develops chronic illness which causes potential health costs to go to infinity. People eventually cannot pay and go untreated. Their insurance is limited to certain cost of operation (so no 2 million dollar a shot experimental cure for you) etc... by nationalizing it you haven't solved this problem, you just moved the decision on when to cut someone off from care to the government. Lo and behold, the government, trying to keep costs manageable, cuts off the most expensive people to treat to keep costs down. So those people are flat out denied care (expensive treatments are not allowed under socialized care, or held in waiting lists until they die from said condition). Care they would have received under a private system...
now you might say "but you reduce the cost because the government isn't trying to make a profit!"... well, the government also isn't made of businessmen, so they mismanage the crap out of it. Healthcare organizations might gross billions, but their profit margins are in the 2 to 3% range. The losses due to government inefficiency are greater than the losses due to large business inefficiency (any large organization has to deal with inefficiency, great businessmen are the worlds best experts in doing so; but inefficiency is never completely eliminated) the government inefficiency extra cost also is greater than that 2 to 3% measily profit.
Then there is the issue of implementation, this SPECIFIC healthcare bill is not like its european cousins. It is 2800 pages long, that means you need whole organizations dedicated to following it, which greatly increases overhead costs. There are companies who literally all they do is manage compliance for your company, for a price. But a lot of private practices will close, which results in less care to go around between people.
Then there is the "no limit on malpractice", something that all socialized care countries have... this is because trial lawyers are huge obama donators.
Then there is the fact that "no prior conditions" means that people can and already DO abuse the system by NOT getting healthcare until they are sick, and canceling it as SOON as they are done getting treatment... what does that mean? well, in Massachusetts 95% of all people were on NON FOR PROFIT healthcare organizations that has gotten the obamacare treatment a few years later... people canceled policies in droves, then signed up when sick, got care, dropped it again. On average each of those renters took out 39x what he paid in. thats not 2 to 3% profit, that is 3800% loss per individual. The non for profit healthcare organizations wanted to raise prices to not go bankrupt, but the governor who nationalized them run on lower costs, so he ordered that costs be slashed. So they opened their books to the public to show they are going bankrupt and flat out STOPPED selling new policies, to anyone (since every policy was costing them 3800% loss)... resulting the governor making threats to throw them in jail... you got to first hand observe the total collapse of care in mass. last year. Just like child care collapsed in hawaii when they foolishly nationalized it.
This Obamacare health nationalization bill is a messy POS and is one of the poorest pieces of legislation ever conceived.
Just an FYI, some healthcare reform is needed, the democrats MANDATED the HMOs via laws they passed in the 1970s, they said it was cruel that people didn't have care, so they passed laws that will result in people losing care and having less of it... under the guise of "compassion". It just so happens that the old laws were less stupid then this new one.
The old ones were bad because the dems thought that the way to have everyone have care is to force the EVIL TM capitalist scum businessmen TM who were they bosses to provide company care... They also limited healthcare plans to within one state only per plan, etc. this resulted in price increases and lock in... you can't quit your job or you lose healthcare, you can't move to another state you lose your care, you can't try to pay for it yourself, its too expensive due to the way its shared... oh, and there are no prior preconditions allowed, again. This causes the cost to employers to be much higher and forces companies to hire less people and pay them less money.
Now, aren't I just a cruel bastard with the no prior preconditions? well, it really SUCKS if you got cancer and nobody will give you care, it does. The thing is, cancer costs hundreds of thousands to MILLIONS to treat... per person, and a huge amount of people get it at SOME point in their life. And this is just cancer, there are other diseases... anyways, you need a lot of people to pay when healthy so that if/when you get sick you get paid back. that is the ONLY way to sustain it. By elimininating preconditions you allow predatory behavior towards insurance companies that results in those 3800% loss per individual, which just causes NOBODY to have healthcare. (of course that works for other diseases too). You should be paying when you don't have cancer to receive care when you do have cancer, otherwise you are trying to steal from everyone else, diminishing total available care, and directly resulting in the death of others who are unable to get proper insurance because you ripped off the system.
A huge problem with the employer lock in is that if you DID pay for 30 years while healthy, then you get sick, then you get fired for completely unrelated reasons a year or two later... well, you lose your care since you were fired! since it was never YOUR care, it was your bosses...
Insurance companies are not allowed to drop care to you because you got sick, and shouldn't be allowed to... you pay when healthy and if you get sick then they pay you back potentially your whole life, and much more then you paid in... that is why it is INSURANCE. Life insurance you pay 30$ a month while young and healthy, if you die your family gets a million dollars, much more than YOU paid, but most people don't die young and healthy... everyone benefits. But imagine that if you were to lose a job, move to another city or state, etc you lose your insurance... its random, its arbitrary, and its hurting the system and makes it dysfunctional... the solution is to make it illegal to tie insurance to a place of business or state. That the insurance is YOURS And it is yours for life, as long as you don't cancel it... that jobs that are required to provide insurance instead provide insurance money (money they pay your insurance on your behalf, because its YOUR insurance, not the company's insurance).
