Trump invites people to tell their insurance stories

I find these stories breath taking, although I've heard it from others, like losing a doctor or network, or not being able to find a doctor who would take it.  Think what a family could do with $8,000, what that money could have done for the economy. How many small businesses couldn't expand due to unaffordable health insurance.  No wonder it was such a slow recovery and only the top 1% gained.  Many conservatives like myself have always believed it would implode by design so that they could put single payer in place. If Mrs. Clinton were president, that's where we'd be. Then instead of controlling 1/5 of the economy, the federal government would probably be controlling 1/4.

"One of the participants in the listening session was Brittany Ivey of Georgia, who said her insurance premiums started at $650 per month in 2009 for her family of four, "but from 2009 to 2015, [it] went up 102%. "Finally, [my husband's] employer told us in 2015 when it went up the final time and additional 34%, that they couldn't carry our family any more, so I had to enter back into the workforce but couldn't find a job that offered health insurance," she said.

As a result, the family had to get insurance on the ACA exchange, she continued, adding that she believed it when former president Obama had said that under the ACA, if you liked your doctors, you could keep them. "So even though we were going to have to pay $1,300 a month for Obamacare, we thought we'd still be OK for our doctors. We were on it for 5 months, our pediatrician wouldn't take it, my doctor wouldn't take it, so we paid $8,000 for 5 months and were never able to use it."

Another participant was Kim Sertich of Arizona, who said she lost her plan three times during the ACA era. After seeing her premiums rise from $365 per month last year to $809 per month this year, and her deductible was slated at $6,800. "It just didn't seem like a good use of my money," she said, adding that she has dropped out of her ACA plan and instead is now on a faith-based share program in which, typically, members send in checks to cover the cost whenever a fellow member gets sick. "My husband also runs his own business and can't afford to offer insurance to his employees."  Medpage Today