Same with my mom with her pre existing conditions, thankfully she is still living. Sorry to hear about your mom.
Without this change she couldn't get insurance, even "catastrophe coverage."
I am not an 0bama fan at all 0%, but I see this for the greater good even with all the fk ups.
People that were eating our tax dollars will no longer as much tax dollars in the next year or so as I understand it....or they go down from taxing us for a big gulp down to a 12oz soda. Every time people go the emergency room, hospitals, have surgery, prescription medicine, etc. and don't have health insurance the "medical" providers gouge the current system
(us).
We all probably have a sick person in the family or freind who can't get health insurance without paying a shit ton for it.
Each time these freinds, family, neighbors go in for care we are paying more as a whole. We don't win, the health care companies win by preppin thy angus for a 20k colonoscopy.
With that said, our country is in a mess and until corporations/politicians don't have a say, it will stay that way.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PaoLy7PHwk"]Public Enemy - Fight The Power - YouTube[/ame]
Dr. Scientist
"Just wanted to chime in on this, though I don't usually talk politics.
From what I understand from people working in the insurance industry, the rates only went up on the plans that were more or less trolling you anyway. The premiums were low because you weren't getting covered for some things that now, under the Affordable Care Act, you need to be covered under. The "good" plans that actually gave you good coverage aren't seeing much if any increases because you weren't being short changed in the fine print. In some cases, your deductible and out-of-pocket expenses will actually be significantly less now than they were before.
We were fortunate enough to get my mom into the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP, the one year forrunner of the full-on Obama Care) earlier this year because all of the insurance companies we applied for rejected her because she had arthiritis in her knee. A few months later we discovered she had two rare diseases, hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) and macrophage activation syndrome (MAS). She was in and out of the hospital for the entire summer before she passed away last month. Had it not been for the Affordable Care Act, we would have had to pay 5.2 million dollars in bills by this December or lose all of our assets. The bills were so high because, prior to the ACA, hospitals could charge $5 for a Tylenol and other crazy stuff like that. A lot of people thought we were mooching off the government and taking our handouts, but in actuality we were paying pretty high monthly premiums and had significant out of pocket costs. In essence, you'd be saving money in the long run.
Some premiums are going up because insurance companies now have to cover people that have pre-existing conditions that they were being denied for and pretty much dying because of it. If we didn't have insurance, we were told that they would have kicked my mom out of the hospital and allowed her to pretty much die. I was able to get in touch with people who went through that experience and it's pretty depressing.
Anyway, I don't advocate all of the Act because I don't know everything about it, but just know that there are a lot of nuanced bits and pieces that aren't entirely black and white."