Well isn't a $3,000 deductible better than having no healthcare, i rather owe $3,000 than lets say a $80,000
By the way, i'm not trying to attack, i'm trying to understand.
Yes, but we already had that if you wanted it. Now it costs more for most people and way less for a small high risk portion.
The aca added a lot of requirements that standardized plans and required population level coverage of various things, whether you wanted them out not, or will use them or not.
People that wanted catastrophic plans used to be able to get them for very cheap and piecemeal together something that let them decide front or backbend cost in a more flexible way, often for as low as 50 bucks a month.
Now it's more comprehensive but you must pay for that increase requirement. and to make the monthly payments lower, the deductible had to keep going up.
The end result is that you won't go bankrupt, but you won't really have insurance coverage until you test that extreme.
I, and many others, would argue you could have accomplished this same act with 1> high risk pools 2> no preexisting conditions 3> individual mandate
Then we added way more to that without patient care in design.
Much of the ACA has nothing to do with coverage but rather incentivizes geographic monopolies of private healthcare systems in hopes of gaining economies of scale (notice all your nearby hospitals buying up all the clinic's and imaging? They'll start their own insurance company next)...but that doesn't seem to be working as the system feeds itself.
Costs savings so far aren't in any increased efficiency or health prevention. It's in lack of utilization. If we truly believe things cost more on the backend, then this will eventually blow up and the costs flat lining will be a temporary blip due to consumer behavior.
And I never think you are attacking. I appreciate the discussion.