[sarah2079]

Another thing that makes it even worse is having health insurance that is tied to your employment. So if you get cancer and can't manage to keep your time off to less than 12 weeks plus your accrued sick days then you can be fired and lose not only your income, but your health insurance as well. It is an unbelievably awful system.

[learc83]

Doesn't the ACA largely fix that? Isn't losing your job a qualifying life event that allows you to sign up outside of the normal open enrollment period?

[opendais]

Sorta but the people that find themselves in that situation will [usually] run out of money before the Cancer either:

A) Kills them B) Is Cured

Losing an income is kinda a big issue when you still have to pay cash for the medical insurance. ACA just fixed one issue. It didn't fix the underlying problem of:

Major Health Event == Bankruptcy Due To Loss of Income

It fixed it for many middle class folks [e.g. programmers] that can save enough to survive that kind of event. I doubt someone making $10-12/hr can save enough.

[dragonwriter]

> Losing an income is kinda a big issue when you still have to pay cash for the medical insurance. ACA just fixed one issue.

ACA also expanded Medicaid eligibility [1] and includes income-based subsidies for insurance, so it addresses (to a certain extent) the having to pay cash for the insurance.

[1] Though several states successfully sued to create an opt-out for the expansion and have opted out, so in those states, the expansion doesn't exist.

[opendais]

Yes. But switching providers isn't that simple and doesn't cover everyone.

Idk about you but I'm paying about $0/year now and I know that coverage would cost me $XXX/month via cobra or the like. I'd have to start over with Medicaid (due to different providers taking it) combined with the fact its a minority expense less than my food or rent.

[the_ancient]

No, not by a long shot.

Insurance is still tied to employment, and even if you can sign up under the exchange after losing a job, the insurance offered under the exchange is less than desirable.

ACA was never designed to solve any problems with health insurance, in fact it was designed to exacerbate them to pave the way for Single Payer Health Care which based on the comments in this thread will be hailed as wonderful by most of the commenters here because people seem to worship government like it was their Saviour

[maxerickson]

Disability insurance is meant to kick in there.

(I'm not arguing that this actually works for everyone, just that there is a mechanism for dealing with inability to work)

[protonfish]

Wrong. Disability will make up for some lost wages, but does not replace medical insurance.

[maxerickson]

Or "wrong" because I just didn't use enough words. COBRA was passed in 1986, so given reasonable DI, medical coverage could be maintained.

ACA makes it that much more likely that coverage could be maintained.

I don't see how it is unreasonable to expect DI to cover a planned expense like medical insurance, but I agree that I didn't spell all that out in painful detail.

[coldpie]

Indeed. Remember this when you go to vote next month.