Let’s set up a hypothetical situation: I have a spouse, a family, and a job. I am reasonably well-compensated for my work. My small company gives me health insurance that meets my family’s needs at a price that fits our budget.
Obamacare goes into effect. My employer decides that he can no longer afford to offer health insurance to all his employees, so he cuts my hours. I no longer qualify as a full-time worker. As a necessary corollary, I no longer have my health insurance.
Exploring the Obamacare website (assuming I actually can access it), I find nothing that meets my needs or my budget, as I still make too much to qualify for a subsidy. This actually is a sop to my pride, as I would be mortified were I to ask my fellow tax-payers to pay for even part of my insurance.
But in order to get health insurance that I can afford–even with tax-payer assistance–I must cut my hours and my salary even more, and I must swallow my pride so that I can qualify for a subsidy for a plan that doesn’t really meet my needs but is all I can afford, even with assistance.
However this cut in hours and pay means that I have far less income to spend on anything other than the very basic necessities for my family–food, mortgage, school clothes for the kids, etc.) I’ll cut back cable TV and internet access, skip my morning stop at the local coffee shop, drop music lessons and after-school sports for the kids, back-burner plans for a Disney vacation (thank goodness we hadn’t mentioned it to the kids yet!), and hope that the grandparents can afford to come and visit us this year, instead of us traveling cross-country to visit them, as is our yearly habit.
Yes, as I look at it, there are lots of ways we can cut the budget to cover the income loss; it’ll be very tight, but I know we can make it. And we’re not the only family tightening our belts. Neighbors, colleagues, even family are all facing similar situations.
So what if the coffee shop goes out of business? They only employ six people–and they’ll probably qualify for unemployment. So what if the music teacher loses most of his students? That’s what welfare is for, right?
All this is doing is creating more dependency… not just those who need the subsidy for their required-by-law, law-of-the-land Obamacare coverage; but also for all those folks who are becoming the casualties of the all too predictable unintended consequences of a very, very bad piece of legislation.
Repeal it now.
Stoutcat
Grand Rants 
“Let’s set up a hypothetical situation: . . . My employer . . . cuts my hours. . . .
“Repeal it now.”
I couldn’t agree more. It already happened to me:
So sorry to hear of your plight. For me it was only hypothetical, for you, as for so many others, it is anything but.
Readers, please click Chillingworth’s link above and buy a tee shirt. I just did.
Thank you, you’re very kind!
I see this out here in the Panhandle of Texas…
1. Enact ACA
2.a Eliminate employer coverage – undocumented
2.b Cut hours and eliminate eligibility – documented
3.a undocumented – no coverage
3.b documented – i.) Medicaid, or ii.) ACA plan – 7500 deductible, 30+% copay – BUT four people in family working – Mom, Dad, two “kids under 26” – average $12/hr in meat packing jobs – total income above cap – no subsidy – cannot afford coverage averaging $500-850/month – no insurance…no coverage.
Local medical system – one FQHC and one RHC – major concern – local tax base – soaked with no-pay or self pay emergencies and Medicaid…lots of Medicaid, CHIPS or CHIPS perinate(Will pay to deliver baby and immediate post-partum care…barely.)
Total level of preventive care – down except Medicare covered care; starting to see vaccine amount drop…bad portents.
A M.E.S.S.
Oh man, VERY bad portents. I hadn’t thought of it in quite that way, but given what you’re saying, we may see a resurgence of what I called a few years ago heirloom diseases.
And so the spiral continues ever downward.
Of course, TB, both standard and atypical are BIG in the American SW as well as popping back up in the HIV community a few decades ago; salmonella comes with the Avian Ag industry (chickens and turkeys – no raw eggs anymore…); my major concern is a drop in the rate of mammography, particularly with the Feds cost push to restrict and raise age eligibility for first study, drop in Well Women visits due to Pap rate recommendations, as well as seeing increased levels of morbidity for routine biliary, colorectal and similar problems. Increased Lap to open GB rates, increased appendicitis complications – will need to consider bellwether or warning stats for adverse effects of ACA, as well as hospital fail, doc practice closure rates.
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Know what else I’m likely to cut out of the budget? Charitable giving. Even though we all know private charities do more real good in the lives of the desperate, I’ve got to feed my family first. I don’t like that choice, but it’s one I’ll have to make.