Consumer Reports offers a helpful guide for you and your family just in time for October 1, the beginning of Obamacare. Check this out

Well, Obamacare arrives October 1, 2013. History will be made, since our country has never had any attempt to create a national healthcare system. There are many opinions regarding Obamacare, however, I believe there is a pent up demand for affordable premium healthcare that cannot go up without reason every year, while we pay more than twice as much as most countries with established healthcare systems. Those who have been abusing the system, in the system, are likely the ones making the most noise since they may also have the most to lose financially. On the other hand, Obamacare also has protections for alternative care such as chiropractor, in that is against the law to discriminate against any one provider group that is shown to be effective as well as cost effective in the care they deliver.

In the past, organized medicine has done a great job sidelining other healthcare providers, while maintaining their monopoly. While the AMA continues to derail this important part of Obamacare, the one that protects other healthcare professions that can potentially be part of the solution to the high cost of care, groups like the American Chiropractic Association are fighting back, since patients deserve a choice. More effective, less expensive equals quality. Before, quantity of care was the norm regardless of the outcome, and now, we should see a reversal of that trend, with chiropractic being a huge part of those cost savings.

Check out the Consumer Reports article.

It’s showtime for health care reform

What the Affordable Care Act means for you and your family

Published: September 2013

Starting Jan. 1

Illustration: Michael Austin

President Obama signed the new health law into effect back in 2010, but its four most momentous changes kick in Jan. 1, 2014:

Just about everyone in the U.S.—except for foreign tourists, undocumented residents, prisoners, and a few other exceptions—will be required to have some kind of health insurance.
If they don’t, most will have to pay a penalty at tax time of $95 per adult and up to $285 per family for the 2014 tax year, and that escalates to $695 for adults and $2,085 for families in 2016.
The long-standing insurance-company practice of turning people down or charging them extra because of pre-existing conditions will be outlawed.
Low- and moderate-income households will get financial help in the form of a new kind of tax credit that they can use right away to help pay for premiums.

A new health marketplace

The centerpiece of the transformed health care system wrought by the Affordable Care Act is an entirely new way of choosing and purchasing individual health insurance known generically as marketplaces. They open for business Oct. 1, 2013, in every state, whether the state is willing or not.

This year only, marketplace open enrollment will run from Oct. 1, 2013, through March 31, 2014. In subsequent years, it will take place on the same schedule as Medicare open enrollment: Oct. 15 through Dec. 7.

In the marketplace, a kind of virtual insurance store, millions of Americans will be able to sign up for the plan of their choice, just like that, no questions asked about their medical history. Well more than half will get the welcome news that they have income-based tax credits coming to them to help pay the premiums.

In addition, about 4 million of the poorest Americans will become newly entitled to free or ultra-low-cost Medicaid coverage, which they can apply for on the spot in their state’s marketplace. It’s one of the most significant expansions of this government-paid health program since its creation in 1965. But at least 5 million more will live in states that have decided not to expand Medicaid in that way, leaving them uninsured and too poor to get tax credits.

Judging from the decibel level of the public argument, you’d think that the new health law will upend the health insurance of practically everybody. But that’s not the case. At least 80 percent of Americans will notice almost no change because they already have insurance that meets the law’s requirements.

That includes the 49 percent of Americans who get health insurance through their or someone else’s job, as well as people who get insurance through the government. That includes Medicare, most Medicaid coverage, CHIP (health insurance for children in low-income families), some Veterans Affairs coverage, and Tricare (health insurance for active-duty military, retirees, and their families).