What Obamacare has done for you

The U.S. Supreme Court is due to issue its opinion on the Obamacare lawsuit this month. While we’re waiting for that, it’s a good time to review what Obamacare has done for you. For one thing it’s saved you money. Indeed, you might be getting a rebate:

Under the 2010 legislation, insurers that don’t spend a specified amount of revenue on actual medical care — as opposed to administrative costs — must refund the difference to customers. The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation has projected refunds would total about $1.3 billion and go to roughly 16 million people who buy their own policies or get them through an employer.

Kaiser estimates checks would range from an average of $72 for those with insurance through a large employer to an average of $127 for those who bought individual policies.

Which brings to mind the difference between “administrative” costs of Big Insurance and Medicare:

Public health care is the real non-profit. Medicare doesn’t spend multi-millions on advertising and lobbying so it can pay its CEO and executive top brass millions of dollars every year. Which leads us to how Obamacare helped senior citizens:

The Medicare agency focused Monday on a section of the law that allows seniors to receive certain preventive services, including an annual checkup, without paying a co-pay or deductible.
CMS said 14.3 million seniors took advantage of that benefit in the first five months of 2012, including more than 1 million who received an “annual wellness visit.”

“Thanks to the health care law, millions of Americans are getting cancer screenings, mammograms and other preventive services for free,” acting CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner said in a statement. “These free preventive services are helping people in Medicare stay healthy and lower their health care costs.”

And there’s the average $600 seniors are saving because Obamacare plugged the donut hole foisted off on seniors in the GOP’s Medicare D giveaway to Big Pharma. Also, there’s the millions of young people who are just graduating from school into a dismal job market, many with huge college debts, who are able to stay on their parent’s policies and thus get regular preventive care instead of waiting until they’re critically ill and running up ER bills they can’t afford to pay.

All this saves you money in hidden health care costs. And this is what Republicans vow to repeal if you elect them to office.