Hopefully they'll be able to afford the new premiums. In some places, like Pennsylvania, the premiums are up over 50 percent! If it doesn't get repealed.
In RI (where I live) the rate has dropped about 1% for next year. In MA - which was the 'blueprint for Obamacare under Romneycare - it has dropped 3%.
I know several people who lost their full time jobs because of the Obamacare rules. The company, a very large local employer with hundreds of employees, cut all of their staff, aside from top management, down from 40 hours to a max of 24 hours so they don't have to provide health insurance any longer. They were providing it before Obamacare to their full timers, but opted out when the new rules came into effect.
I find fault with the companies for doing that, not Obamacare. Most of these companies - especially the big companies such as the restaurants I mentioned, plus the notorious WalMart - can very well afford to provide some kind of health insurance to their workers. Still, they will jump into any loophole to get out of it. They just don't value their employees, or their health.
But I only know a few of them personally. Unfortunately, one of them is a single mom with two little ones, who now has to work two part time jobs instead of one full time job and her day care expenses have almost doubled because of it.
Thanks, Obamacare...
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I have to say, long before Obamacare I was self-employed for 25 years. I had to find my own health insurance via Blue Cross (who, in the 1980s was not even insuring self-emloyed) or UnitedHealth' checking out my options each renewal period. I never ever went to doctors (I was a younger male, that explains it), had prescriptions - nothing. I had health insurance 'just in case', but never used / abused it from 1987-2011. I can seriously count on one hand how many times I used it in that period.
YET, my health insurance kept rising every year (both companies were similar in price) - 15-50% for no particular reason at all. They cut way back on services for their health plans yet the premiums skyrocketed. I ended up with 'catastrophic' insurance at the end, and still paid unbelievable premiums (I ended up without health insurance for 2011; could not afford it at all). Similarly, this is why so many of my friends who are self-employed were without insurance for so long - who could afford it?
Believe me, if Obamacare was available to me back then, I would have gotten it.
"Splodey heads keep splodin' " - Sarah Palin, 7-1-16
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