Myth: “Obamacare Forces Me to Pay for Other People’s Health Care”
Long before the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, you were paying for other people’s healthcare in many different ways. When you pay insurance premiums, that money doesn’t only go towards your healthcare, it helps pay medical costs for every person insured by that company.
Likewise, when someone without health insurance received care in an emergency room, and they couldn’t pay their bills, the hospital didn’t just write off those costs. They passed that expense on to you and every other patient in the form of higher medical costs, higher insurance premiums, and higher deductibles.
However, the Affordable Health Care Act now requires everyone to get insurance, so you will no longer have to pay for other people’s health care when they don’t have insurance.
What’s more, Emergency Room care is the most expensive form of health care. Since more people have insurance, they’ll get the health care they need when they need it instead of waiting for the problem to get so bad that they need to go to the ER. This saves a lot of money and reduces the costs that are passed on to other patients.
In the long run, this reduces the rate at which the overall cost of healthcare rises.
The Affordable Care Act has also saved taxpayers a lot of money. According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, over $4.1 billion has already been saved by reducing Medicare and Medicaid fraud.
They also report that senior citizens have saved over 4 billion on prescription drugs. None of these savings cost you any extra money as a taxpayer or as a consumer.
Read our Myth Crashing section for many more facts vs. fiction articles, compiled by Jeff. B.
Image Credit: AP/Charles Dharapak
