So what's going to happen to health care now?

smartassmommy · Nov 11, 2016

I am conservative leaning, but after getting to research healthcare system around the world, I realized that systems like the NHS are really the way we need to go.

Also, maybe we'll get lucky and Press-Gainey will no longer decide reimbursement!

DawnJ · Nov 11, 2016

I work in ER and see all these patients with Medicaid from ACA. I don't think they are going to stop coming in using the ER like a walk-in clinic because their ACA goes away. Which makes me frightened about the financial future of the department. We have to treat them, won't get paid. What's different from before ACA? Treatment costs are even higher than before and we will run deeper in the red.

historylovinglpn · Nov 11, 2016

To the above..make that three ducks.....Also conservative fiscally, own a gun, but socially very liberal. And thus I vote Democrat. you guys aren't alone!

Elleveein, LVN · Nov 11, 2016

I also work for an ins company (Molina). I'm worried about my job. Do I go now or wait and see?....The CEO sent an email out that said everything will be ok but you can't trust that

Elleveein, LVN · Nov 11, 2016

I may be affected in two ways. Firstly, I am a case manager in the Medicaid MCO division of a major health insurance company. My job exists due to Medicaid expansions that occurred a couple of years ago. If Medicaid is targeted for budgetary cuts, my job could be in limbo.
Secondly, I was uninsured from 2010 to late 2013. Due to the ACA, I was able to obtain insurance in December 2013 spite of my pre-existing health conditions. Depending on what happens, I may rejoin the ranks of the uninsured in a few years. At this point we can only speculate.

Are you looking for other work? I work for Molina (major ins company), I don't know what to do. I'm so worried about being laid off with a new mortgage.

Archerlpvn, LPN, LVN · Nov 11, 2016

To the above..make that three ducks.....Also conservative fiscally, own a gun, but socially very liberal. And thus I vote Democrat. you guys aren't alone!

Make that four ducks in that pond! I'm socially liberal, a gay male nurse, firearm wielding but fiscally conservative.

joanna73, BSN, RN · Nov 11, 2016

I'm very worried for everyone. I only hope Trump has good sensible advisors, and that he listens to them.

Time will tell, but I see him ensuring that the corporate ideologies dominate health care. He's a businessman.

Zooey72 · Nov 11, 2016

What people don't understand about the whole heathcare debate is that insurance is not healthcare. The reason it is expensive is because there is a limit of qualified people and resources. If you increase the number of medical staff the price will go down (and so would our wages, along with doctors and CNAs etc). The other way you can control cost is by capping the wages medical people make. Don't bite my head off, I am just the messenger; but the median pay for a nurse in this country is 68,000 a year. The median HOUSEHOLD income is 51k a year. So one nurse makes about 17k more a year than an entire house. If you look at specialist nurses and Doctors, the gap becomes much larger.

I am in no way saying that there is something wrong with how much we (or doctors) make. Getting the education and doing the job warrants it and than some IMO. What I am saying is the price of healthcare is such that you can't control how much equipment costs (costs do go down, but once they do someone makes a better version of it and it is replaced). How much supplies cost pretty much goes the same way. When they are looking to save money, they are looking at us. And don't think for a second that someone who makes 18k a year is going to think you deserve to make three and a half times as much they do, and when it comes to a vote you know how they will go.

I don't have a solution. Health care is expensive, and that is just the way it has always been. Nobody here wants less quality when it comes to this kind of thing. It's not like a car where you can opt out of leather to save a few bucks. When it comes to healthcare everyone wants a corvette and there just are not that many corvettes to go around.

elkpark · Nov 11, 2016

I'm very worried for everyone. I only hope Trump has good sensible advisors, and that he listens to them.

And who would those people be? So far (throughout the campaign) he's surrounded himself with right wing kooks, hacks, and sycophants.

Aromatic · Nov 11, 2016

Healthcare is too complex to be cheap. Everything else is easy to fix compared to the body since everything else in the world we humans created but we did not create the body.

Future will probably hold stratified care where the poor get older/cheaper stuff unless they dish out the cash for the newest and best. Even though we all know to some extent this already happens.

Cut down physician, nursing, and other allied health wages and you won't get the quality of care that you get currently, people with work ethic and brains will seek other ways for financial reward.

Sounds evil of me but probably true. The rest is complete speculation. Good input from everybody above though.

Chinesedog · Nov 11, 2016

I don't know about you, but years before the ACA went into full effect there was a multistep transition we had to go through. It changed our entire operation a bit. The first thing I learned as a nurse was "costs, costs, costs" and how area hospitals were going out of business because people just don't pay their bills. I was told to admit Medicare patients first because they paid the most. Every place I worked freaked out about us using extra pieces of gauze and cut corners to dangerous levels.

All of these problems were the result of decades of financial healthcare disasters. If you remember the HMO movement in the 80's, that failed and led to the need for ACA. With the ACA, we can't be denied due to pre-existing conditions.

My employer cancels our insurance if we go below 20/h a week for two weeks in a row. With my chronic illness child, she would have lost her insurance and I'd be bankrupt soon. I rely on the ACA to have insurance that doesn't cost 4 figures for the both of us.

I haven't had to attend the "omg, stop using so many supplies" meetings in years nor have I been asked to go home as little as an hour early to save the facility money. Financially, the ACA is helping a lot. Keep in mind premiums have been going up long before the ACA, they aren't going up because of it. Please don't get rid of ACA because certain people are on a crusade to do it. My tiny girl needs her mama to not lose the house over her hospital bills.

allnurses Guide · Nov 11, 2016

I have no idea. I do know that insurance premiums will NOT go down. They never do. So that leaves changes in coverage, which will NOT get better. It never does.