[kradroy]

If you're employed and your employer is generous, then your insurance premiums can be inexpensive (low double digits per month if you're single, low triple digits if you have dependents) . My wild speculation is that most employers aren't as generous as they could be.

If you're "poor", insurance is actually cheap, because that's when you get public insurance. However, if you're just middle income, health care is a non-trivial portion of your income. One major health incident will bankrupt you and you're likely to become poor. But once you're poor, hey, you can get cheap health insurance.

The critical problem is that obtaining reasonable health insurance requires you to be employed full time at a large company. This must stop. Obamacare was a first step toward cutting the employer out of the picture.

[rxhernandez]

When I made less than $30k/year in Los Angeles and had Obamacare, I was paying $144/month to see a nurse associated with a second rate doctor (I also went to a couple urgent care facilities with nearly the same level of quality). The wait times were an average of two hours and I paid at least $75 /visit without any real resolution to my allergy problems. I probably had 10 visits without that needed resolution.

When I became a salaried employee in the Bay area I went to an urgent care recommended by Cigna and my allergy problems were resolved inside of 15 minutes with a $20 copay.

Obamacare is anything but cheap when you are poor.

[apercu]

"Obama" care is a far cry from single payer.

[mjevans]

The last step is a full-coverage default public option, paid for out of taxes. Enough to eliminate the billing departments outside of actual luxury medicine.

As far as cost controls/etc, set by something like a dutch auction within a given metro area, and then some bean counter will get to figure out if it's cost effective to ship people that are outside of metro areas in to them to provide non-urgent care.

[Tsubasachan]

Yeah I don't know how it is in the US but in my country everyone is employed on a temporary basis. The days of actually getting a stable job for life are long gone. Getting a two year contract is the best you can get.