{"id":374,"date":"2012-06-28T14:37:06","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T21:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/28\/affordable-health-care\/"},"modified":"2012-09-19T11:28:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-19T18:28:00","slug":"affordable-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/28\/affordable-health-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Affordable Health Care"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s what this Supreme Court decision means to me: affordable health care<\/a>, and complete coverage. <\/p>\n

It means that I can have coverage over my urinary tract, the whole of which is excluded by my current insurance because of a benign bladder polyp removed 12 years ago. As a 61-year old man with an excluded urinary tract, I’m a little nervous. You know, prostate and all that.<\/p>\n

I still have to wait until January 2014 when insurance can no longer exclude pre-existing conditions. That’s also the date when insurance companies can no longer set dollar limits on the annual amount of coverage, though lifetime limits on essential care were already abolished in 2010. And if I made an error on my insurance application, since 2010 my coverage can no longer be rescinded.<\/p>\n

A plurality of Americans disapprove of the overall AHCA, though a majority approve of many of its specific requirements. The individual mandate is the part that most bothers me: Can Congress require everyone to buy insurance? I’m surprised the Supreme Court approved it; I really expected it to be struck down. But I think it’s an essential part of the overall plan.<\/p>\n

It remains to be seen how it will all fall out in practice. Many people who are working just so they can afford insurance will be able to retire, which may open up job vacancies and reduce unemployment. Will overall medical costs go down, as the bill intended, or will medicine become more expensive from increased bureaucracy and loopholes in the law? <\/p>\n

One thing I do know: Our current system has long been “socialized medicine”. If a person without insurance and no money to pay a doctor needs health care, they go to an emergency room which cannot legally turn them away, and the rest of us end up sharing the cost. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s what this Supreme Court decision means to me: affordable health care, and complete coverage. It means that I can have coverage over my urinary tract, the whole of which is excluded by my current insurance because of a benign bladder polyp removed 12 years ago. As a 61-year old man with an excluded urinary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}