Will the International Nightmare of FATCA Finally Be Repealed? https://t.co/Bz1TIPKyMe via @wordpressdotcom
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) March 8, 2017
You will find the article on his blog here. Mr. Mitchell’s blog is well read, highly respected and includes well written posts that “cry out” for intelligent comments.
@George,
I got around to returning to the site, and followed the links you provided. The key issue is cost, not access.
Ironically, your links contradict your core assertion that the Michigan health insurance was functional pre-ACA, and are a bit more supportive of my argument. Your links are: a consultants’ doc circa 2007 that proposes to reduce BCBCSM “individual mandate” from 1980; a powerpoint presentation to legislators that is very light on data; and a page from retired Sen. Levin on the spiralling health care costs pre-ACA!
In 2009, the company I was at laid off 71% of it’s workforce in 5 months. There was a process followed for each lay-off, and it included providing information on health care. Because of my role I had the displeasure of experiencing this dozens of times. This was pre-ACA. Yes, we had BCBSM. Yes, access was guaranteed; however, reasonable rates were not. I have personally handed people paperwork that their best insurance option was going from $200-$250 per month to something over $2,000. My wife’s termination paperwork in 2012 — before the individual ACA market was up — gave us the option of paying $1,200 per month for her coverage alone.
I also went through some lay-offs in 2001, and at that time health care was much lees of a consideration for those laid off. The difference was cost: insurance costs in 2001 were so much cheaper because health care costs were spiralling in the years prior to the ACA!
Health insurance cost was a key reason why this Canadian couple moved home a couple of years ago. There is little someone can write on the internet that will change my mind about a subject I have spent hundreds of hours looking for a workable solution. The reality is a huge section of the population in the US lives in real fear of being bankrupted or destroyed by the combination of sky-high insurance rates and job loss. The details vary from state to state, and Michigan is roughly middle of the pack on most metrics of health by US State. ACA did not entirely fix the system, but it did cut the rate of uninsured nationally from ~16% to 8.8% nationwide.