Forget the politics, here is what you need to do TODAY to prepare for the repeal of Obamacare also questionnaire as the “Affordable Care Act”.
President elect Donald Trump has stated that in his first 100 days in office he will repeal Obamacare. YES, you DO need to prepare for this or you could find yourself without any medical insurance should you be laid off.
First, a little history on America’s horribly screwed up medical system.
Before the Affordable Care Act, people with good jobs had really good medical coverage and very cheap insurance rates subsidized or paid in full by their employers but those without jobs were not so fortunate. For those out of work, the best option was to be put on their spouses insurance plan if they were employed but if the unemployed was single, things were tough. Individuals could sign up for insurance but they had to fill out a very lengthy questionnaire about their health and if they checked any box ‘yes’ on the multi-page application, they were put into the high risk category. For anyone with pre-existing conditions, if they were offered insurance at all, it was so expensive that it was simply un-affordable.
I can tell you my personal experience with pre-existing conditions in the year before the Affordable Care Act. I thought I would get my own insurance rather than being on my Husband’s policy so I applied to three different companies, Kaiser, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of California. At the time, I was having some knee issues so being the honest person I was, when asked on the applications if I had seen a doctor in the last 3 years, I indicated these knee visits. What followed was almost comical, they asked a zillion questions about the knee and what the problem was. I said I didnt know – the knee was swollen and the doctor didnt know why either. Even after getting the doctors records, two of the three refused to offer me insurance at all and the third offered it for $890/mo and the whole frustrating application process took over 6 months. If I had this much trouble because of a silly swollen knee, you can imagine that people with serious medical conditions like diabetes or heart disease were simply un-insurable when they applied as individuals.
Just lie and check all the boxes “no” on the form? Not gonna work, why? If the insurance company suspects that you lied on ANYTHING in the application then even after decades of paying premiums, they could deny to pay benefits once you landed in the hospital and needed the coverage.
In this pre-existing conditions era, insurance companies prospered by offering insurance only to people who would never need to use it.
Affordable Care Act
Again, skipping the politics here one of the singly most important provisions of Obamacare was that insurance companies were prohibited from using pre-existing conditions to set your insurance rate or deny coverage.
Preparing for the repeal of Obamacare
OK, so here we are. The Affordable Care Act is going to be repealed and its very likely that insurance companies will again be able to deny insurance based on pre-existing conditions and be able to base monthly rates based on pre-existing conditions which will make insurance un-affordable for anyone without perfect health.
If you listened to me in my “nothing to hide?” article several years back then you have nothing to do. If you didn’t, here is what you need to do – you need to remove anything and everything from the internet that might allow insurance companies to deny you coverage or claim you had a pre-existing condition. Remember that once you file a medical claim, they WILL get onto your Facebook page and see if they can find anything at all to deny your benefits! You need to delete all posts from all social media websites that have any health, illness, or medication content:
- Delete any photos or text of talking about being sick, even if it was just a cold.
- Delete any photos or text mentioning any injury, even if its just spraining your pinky.
- Delete anything mentioning any medication at all, even aspirin.
- Delete anything mentioning doctors visits.
- Delete anything mention being blue, down or depressed.
- Delete anything at all referring to your weight, diets, or eating habits.
- Delete any photos or text of you drinking alcohol or smoking anything.
- Delete any photos or text of you doing risky activities (sky diving, scuba diving, bungee jumping, etc)
- etc
About now, young people are laughing and think that none of this applies to them because they are young and healthy – think again. 15 years from now when you are obese, have diabetes, and lose your job it will be too late to delete this stuff and you will never qualify for insurance. So, get on Facebook now and start deleting!