Another feature of ACA that is not talked about much.

[SoCalDem]

Before ACA:

Let's say you have insurance with a job, and you become seriously ill. Sooner or later you WILL lose that job, and with it, the insurance. After that happens you have the "option" of COBRA, but without income, it's almost impossible to pay for, so you end up uninsured and a charity-case at the worst possible time...and it may cost you your life...it surely will cost you your credit rating if you cannot afford to pay the bills for your care.

With ACA, there are emergency/special case adjustments available, and with a substantial loss of income, you would probably be put into Medicaid with NO charge.

Before the expanded medicaid with ACA, your family income may have disqualified you, but since they upped the ante, so to speak, many more people will qualify...and not suffer a loss of coverage at the time they need it most

[ebbie15644]

1. That happened to me

I worked and had excellent insurance and while I was in a nursing home recovering, I was fired. I had to pay COBRA for a year while I applied for employment disability. I couldn't pay for the part that covered prescriptions and had to rely on charity for them.

[SoCalDem]

2. It happened to us too in 1995.. Our COBRA was MORE than our housepayment

but we HAD to have it because our oldest & youngest children needed the coverage desperately because of his pre-existing conditions, so we did without & paid over $1k a month for the family coverage

[ebbie15644]

7. I was lucky enough that

1) I live with my parents and we have been pooling our money
2) I bought a short-term disability insurance term through work
3) as soon as I was eligible, I qualified for SSDI because I was in a nursing home and they helped me fill the paperwork out.

[central scrutinizer]

3. Uninsured medical care costs are the number one cause of bankruptcies

The health care industry will stick a giant vacuum tube into your assets and not stop until they have everything - your house, your retirement money.

[n2doc]

4. Doesn't medicaid also go after your assets?

I have read that it does. I don't think medicare does.

[jeff47]

5. Medicare does not, because it is not need-based.

Medicaid does, because it is need-based. And you had to have virtually no assets to hit the "need" threshold. What assets it could collect depends on which state you live in.

Medicaid expansion in the ACA should make that somewhat better.

[ebbie15644]

10. yes, you have to sell or spend down the assets you have until you hit the qualifying number.

[leftstreet]

6. Actually abt 75% had medical insurance

...of people who declared with medical debt

Unless you meant costs that their medical insurance didn't cover?

[IronLionZion]

8. and people who live in liberal states

will be better off than those states who didn't expand medicaid.

At some point red states may start to notice that they made a very expensive mistake.

[SoCalDem]

9. Some might have to vote with their feet & start moving to those other states

Better to be in a state that at least has some concern for your well-being..