| Naum said: Yeah must be horrible to pay a little more tax so you can help poor people get the medicare they need to survive... The US healthcare is fucking disgusting. |
US healthcare sucks, but it's not simply paying a "little more" tax. Let's say you're a 25 year old, just out of college, and earning the median salary of $45,000 per year. The absolute cheapest plan on the ACA that you can pay for would cost $200.75 per month, or a little over $2,400 per year. That's with a $7,150 deductible as well. Factor taxes, housing, transporation, food, utilities, and other living expenses into that, and you have, according to Time Money, the average out of college student with around $675 ($8,100 per year) left to spend each month before healthcare. Now tack that $200.75 onto that, and you've instantly taken out nearly a third of your spending money that was left over (oh, and this doesn't even begin to consider paying back student loans, if you have any of those). Furthermore, this healthcare doesn't even particularly matter to you, except in the case of emergenies. You won't find many 25 year olds racking up $7,150+ of healthcare expenses in a single year.
To put it simply, this isn't a smart decision for the "young invincibiles" crowd that Democrats were banking on to make the ACA a success. And it's not simply people being selfish and refusing to pay a "little more" in taxes; it's nearly a third of their average disposable income leftover each month that may need to go towards a myriad of other things, such as a new car, or paying off student loans, or whatever. And for those who make less than the median $45,000 a year, good luck figuring out how to juggle all that. A significant number of students will simply take the penalty and pay $700 per year than take the $2400 a year hit for healthcare they will likely never benefit from.
And that's largely what's happened. The ACA isn't struggling because there's a whole bunch of greedy rich people up there who refuse to shell out an additional $200 for healthcare; those people already have healthcare and are already paying into the system. The ACA is struggling because it banked on convincing a large group of relatively unwealthy low risk people to pay much more for healthcare than they already were, and that's just simply not going to happen when their finances are tight already.
