Has anyone (in U.S.) had any bad experiences with Obama Care?

norestforweary, have you experienced higher rates? I think that is what the original poster is asking for -- examples.

Insurance rates have steadily risen for decades, unrelated to Obamacare. In 1999 the "average family" (whoever that is) spent 11% of its income on health insurance. in 2010 that statistic was 19%. Yikes! I know that employers have struggled with how to continue to offer the same benefits to employees in the face of rising premiums. (This was before Obamacare.)

There is one aspect of the affordable care act that will probably impact premiums. Insurance companies can no longer exclude certain higher-cost people from the pool. If they have to cover people with preexisting conditions, for example, that will probably mean bigger payouts. Bigger payouts mean bigger premiums. If you don't have any conditions, this may seem unfair. If you were diagnosed with diabetes at age 17, this will seem totally just.

My first employer after college (a very large corporation) provided life insurance as a benefit -- but only for men. I kid you not. When laws changed and society said they could no longer do that, they had a choice of offering smaller life insurance amounts to everyone, offering life insurance to no one, or extending the same benefits to everyone and paying the difference out of profits. (Ha ha on that last option.) Some of the men really hated that new law! They had a nice big policy before and now they were going to have to pay something toward the policy if they wanted to keep the same amount. No fair! Terrible public policy! Somehow as a democracy we survived that upheaval and many younger people think I am making it up when I tell that experience.

If you are among those for whom insurance costs are going up, norestforweary, I am sorry for you. I have friends whose costs have gone up and deductibles have gone up nearly every year for the last decade. I was sorry for them, too.

That doesn't change my belief that allowing people with preexisting conditions to obtain insurance is a good thing.

I get the part of accrued medical bills, and younger people who won't have pensions later on. Gosh I was out of my childhood home at age 18. My big concern is after all the premiums/deductibles get raised even more than they are now, how are any of us little people going to be able to pay? It seems similar now that people have to give up homes to pay for care ex:medicaid etc. Especially when there are terminal disease involved and require many different treatments, doctors, medicines, testing and copays? It is very unsettling.

I am sooo grateful that my self-employed artist daughter can finally afford decent health insurance. She recently had a medical problem attended to that she had suffered with for a long time.

My self-employed handy-man son is also a candidate for new health insurance. Hooray!

When I was self-employed I was paying $800 a month for insurance. I had a good gig. What struggling artist or handyman can afford that?

Our approach to healthcare is gradually shifting from "you can have only what you can afford" to "access to good healthcare is a basic human right." During this transition some who by luck of working for certain employers may get less lucky. (I don't know that, but I guess it is possible.) I am sorry about that. But that is greatly outweighed by how glad I am for people who can finally have access to our excellent but expensive healthcare system.

Is the affordable care act the end-all be-all height of perfection? Absolutely not! Is it a great step in the right direction? Oh, I don't doubt that at all.

My mother died in 1962 and left behind medical bills of $10,000. My dad had to put the house up for sale. When I first got health insurance in 1972, it was only catastrophic coverage, not day to day stuff. It became effective after you paid $1000 out of pocket. The next step up was insurance that only kicked in when you were hospitalized. I don't have Cadillac insurance, I have to pay $100 a month deducted from my pension, I am 62. I am eternally grateful that Obamacare made it possible for my daughter to get good coverage after her husband walked out and left her with a lapse in coverage. She pays about 1/4 of her SSDI check to keep it. On the other hand we are living too long, lives unnaturally extended by drugs. Good grief my grandparents barely made 70. Today they would make 90, but at a huge cost. People aren't allowed to die anymore. But the way we keep them alive is inhumane, strapped to beds and loaded with pills. Something has to change.

gsw what was it before? how has it changed?

My "Obamacare" is Humana. Now, that's a joke. Insurance companies rule the US.

And the elephant does not have to live by it's own rules.

the insurance industry is a bloated , parasitic mess and its a matter of time theyll be thrown out of the fray and we'll go single payer / socialistic style medicine. obama got medical records and communities digitized and online in only his first 3 years of office just like he proposed. all eyes are on the elephant in the room right now ( insurers ) and im loving it.
get a JOB baggy pants..

I don't believe that the employer gets penalized for having insurance that's "too good". that's a much too simplistic way of looking at what is going on.

I think it's sad an employer is treating his employees with utmost concern for their health and wellbeing and then gets penalized!

I work for NYC; I probably have what is considered Cadilac insurance and will have to pay more for it in the future...but the fact that my 31 year old daughter, college graduate, in graduate school working babysitting/daycare jobs was able to get some decent health insurance to care for her bad back and depression is worth anything that I have to pay. Add in the fact that I don't have to worry any longer about what might happen if she got hit by a bus, had a serious infectious illness, etc. I think Obamacare is a good if not great fix. It needs tweaking no doubt. But it's a start.

Freqflyer... thanks for the info His company has treated their employees very well.

I too just recently got insurance through Obamacare. Premiums for me and my husband, self employed at our own small business, were $1000 per MONTH, with a $5000 deductible for him and a $7500 deductible for me - meaning if we were in an accident together, we would have to pay out $12,500 before insurance would pay a dime. That's after paying a grand a month. And of course after the deductible, we still had to pay all the copays, etc. We weren't really insuring our health - we were insuring that we didn't lose our house. If you have Cadillac insurance, well, good for you, but before you bash Obamacare, put yourself in my place, or in the place of someone with a serious illness who couldn't get insurance at any price. I'm finally getting some doctor attention. Obamacare has been virtually a lifesaver for me - and yes, I pay for my premiums.

Sounds like the so-called Cadillac tax, which starts in 2018, which taxes companies that offer high-end health care plans to their employees.

You have been very lucky that your husband's company has been paying 100% of your medical insurance [I assume that means the company paid your monthly premium, paid the deductible, and paid all the co-pays].... decades ago many Fortune 500 companies offered that to employees but throughout the years slowly the employees started to pay some of the premiums, had small deductibles and may or may not have had co-pays. Those great benefits have disappeared over the past couple of decades. I'm surprised there are still companies still offers such benefits. Be thankful you have had this type of insurance for whatever amount of time you had.

I'm jealous. Back when I was self-employed, my monthly premium was $550 per month, the deductible was $2,500.00 and my co-pays were $20 for every time I walked through a doctor's door, and that was just for me alone. That was a decade ago, can't imagine what the cost would be in the past few years. Wish we had the Affordable Care Act back then, those of us who were self-employed would have had more affordable health insurance.