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gringo pistolero wrote:It's interesting to observe many of these complaints are coming from people who already embraced socialist medicine in the form of medicare, etc. Don't take this the wrong way because I'm not in favor of obamacare. In fact, I think it's unconstitutional like 90% or more of the federal laws on the books, despite what old people in robes say, but I think it's an interesting comment on the differences between principles and practice.

If you are feeling adventurous when you turn 65, you can try to avoid Medicare. I'm guessing that things won't go well for you when the Social Security Administration learns of your decision. As TAM pointed out, no one will sell you a "full" medical insurance policy because then they, too, would be breaking the rules. You can only buy Medicare supplements after that age.

Now to be clear, you must have Medicare Part A. You don't have to add Parts B or D. I pay extra for Part B but before my employer policy was cancelled due to Obamacare, it would not pay anything unless I had Medicare Part B so I have Part B and the monthly bill for it, too. Part B for the money that paid for it this year, proved to be pretty worthless. But it is pretty much a trap that I don't know how to get out of at the moment. It covered my flu shot and nearly nothing else.

The Annoyed Man wrote:To add a little more fuel to the fire chasfm11 refers to which will affect seniors more than the young, by virtue of the general degradation of health that accompanies old age: The threshold for being able to write off medical expenses on your income tax return has gone up significantly from 7.5% to 10% of adjusted gross income. So in addition to having increased costs all around (premiums, deductibles, medical device taxes, etc., etc.), at a season of life when income begins to taper off, seniors have to pay out a much larger percentage of their shrinking income dollars in medical expenses before they can claim a tax write-off. People often like to say that the measure of a civilization is how well it takes care of its weaker members. Seniors are learning with a vengeance exactly how little their government values them.

I remember a great nation in which government cared about encouraging the creation and preservation of the wealth of its people. I defy anybody to tell me that nation still exists as anything except a leviathan which views its people as a cash cow it can squeeze while its elites in DC live a sybaritic lifestyle completely disconnected from realities outside the beltway, and completely absolved of the financial consequences of their own decision-making.

For me, the governmental rationing of care is the most scary part of all of this. Those who have called the possibility of "death panels" a conspiracy theory should have to sit beside me for the remaining years of my life and witness how wrong they were. It is almost a poetic ending that the government will solve the some of the unfunded liability of the budget out years of the Baby Boomer Social Security by being in control of the medical care to make sure that they don't collect. The same government who passes social legislation to aid those who "need" it does not count the health needs of the senior population, especially the ex-military portion, that is is under its control in that need equation. There, it is solely based on finances. Look at the cuts already slated for Medicare and Tricare to see exactly what I mean.

Like TAM, Obamacare forced the termination of my Medicare supplement paid for by my former employer. Just yesterday, I completed registration for the best alternative that I can get for 2014. While the premium costs are not astronomically high, the deductibles and co-pays are - $6,000 for me alone. So I have to pay $6,000 on "allowable" expenses before almost any part of my supplement kicks in. My wife, still covered under my former employer's group plan through May, 2014 will have a premium of nearly $1,000 a month and with very high deductibles and co-pays.

To be fair, medical costs were an escalating problem before Obamacare was passed. But what it did was to throw a large amount of gasoline on top of the fire that was already burning through money for healthcare. It imposed several layers of political burden on an already volatile situation. In the name of fairness, it is definitely fixed it so we will all be in the same situation - with little or no access to medical insurance coverage.

As we sit today, we've used 23.4% of our total expenses on medical care and insurance in 2013. If my calculations are correct and without any unforeseen medical situations occurring, that is going to jump to 28% thru May 2014 and who knows where from there. The worst part is that I have a Medicare part B plan which I pay over $100 per month for that has paid almost nothing in this year against the expenses that I have had. That will double next year with my wife on Medicare, too. It is already difficult to find providers who will accept Medicare and my supplement requires me to run all expenses through Medicare or they won't consider them. If it were not for a catastrophic situation, I would be far better off abandoning everything and simply paying my doctors in cash. I would have actually saved money this year by doing that.