Health care is meaningless if not affordable

Hunger now costs OH almost $7 billion in direct costs related to health care, lost educational attainment and diminished productivity. The same goes with practically any piece of health care-related policy that changes how health providers and health insurers do business and impacts Americans’ lives.

Early 21st century American conservatism is incompatible with guaranteeing that everyone in America has somewhere to go to get health care no matter what.

“The Affordable Care Act is a job killer and a drag on the economy!”

Those changes to hospital finances allowed them to expand programs and add personnel. The Affordable Care Act hinged, in part, on states expanding Medicaid to reach more people.

As Catherine Rampell notes in the Washington Post, that might be all right if the legislation authorizing interstate sales set new national rules for insurance policies. They determine how much they spent on health care claims over the previous year and project what they might spend in the coming year.

If insurers take Republicans up on interstate health policy sales, it will probably produce a race to the bottom and then a death spiral.

What the President means by “increased access” is open to some debate. Some patients described how they would not be able to pay for necessary procedures. However, people were concerned that removing it completely might leave them without any healthcare option. Those payments from the federal government used to make up for the cost of caring for the uninsured but largely were phased out when more people became insured. Repealing the ACA without a plan to improve the health insurance and thus healthcare access violates the principle to “do no harm” that guides our doctors when we are patients.

But he says a reduced block grant would amount to “passing the buck without passing the bucks”.

The site was created by the company HealthMarkets, a distributor of individual and family health insurance based in North Richland Hills, Texas, which serves many self-employed clients. There were also huge spikes in cost in Minnesota (55%) and Oklahoma (67%), among other markets.

In New Hampshire, it’s been a slightly different story.

These ideas promise “access” to care but deny the importance of making care affordable and effective. A 40-year old resident would pay $267 per month today, compared to $289 per month in 2014.

The failure to even have a conversation about Medicaid expansion is among the most reprehensible actions to plague the Kansas legislature of recent years.

That generosity is about to expire, however. But plans like that cost more.

West Virginia gained about 6,500 healthcare jobs since the state expanded medicaid in 2014. “Choice sounds good, but in insurance it leads to a lot of problems”, says Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

For Americans who have been wondering what will happen to the health care coverage, the question continues to remain unanswered. Now the high-risk pool is gone, and if the ACA is repealed without a plan, or with Paul Ryan’s current plan, I don’t know what my family will do for insurance.

One side claims it has helped millions.