Healthcare will be key topic in general election

How the respective candidates will handle healthcare and what they will do with ObamaCare promises to be a key point in the coming elections.

The government released figures on Thursday indicating that 20 million Americans went from being uninsured to be insured since the Affordable Care Act took effect, including more than 6 million young persons 18-27. Lives have been saved, in the process.

How the respective candidates say they will deal with the ACA or its replacement will go a long ways toward determining who is elected.

For many, access to affordable healthcare is a life and death situation that will drive them to the polls.

Simply doing away with the ACA and going back to the way it was is not an option that the public will accept. It is helping too many people. What needs to happen is that, whoever is elected, needs to work to improve the ACA and make it more fair — not simply do away with it.

The biggest reform that is needed is the rule that says if health insurance is affordable for the family member, whose employer provides it, it is considered affordable for the other family members.

My daughter lives back in Tennessee with her husband and daughter. His employer, thinking he was keeping up with the times, decided to do a company plan — though his business had just 15 employees. Businesses with fewer than 50 employees are not fined for not providing coverage, so what he was doing was unnecessary. The result would have been that — to insure my daughter and my granddaughter, as well as her husband – the premium alone would have equaled 25 percent of their income. Only my son-in-law works, while my daughter stays at home with my soon-to-be three-year-old granddaughter and minds the small farm that they own.

His premium alone would have exceeded the 9.5 percent rule, so they were able to get a policy through the ACA for an affordable amount.

That aspect of the law desperately needs to be changed, along with several other provisions and someone needs to get in control of the cost of drugs. There is much that needs to be done, but simply dropping the ACA and going back to where only the rich can afford healthcare is not going to get it and candidates need to be mindful of the backlash that would come if they suggest that the ACA simply be done away with.

Choose your candidate carefully with an eye on your health coverage. Lives could depend on it.

Ron Bliss is an agent with Affordable Healthcare Pros in Carson City and is certified on both the Nevada Health Link and Covered California. He can do policies for individuals and their families both on and offer both exchanges. Affordable Healthcare Pros also offers a wide array of other health insurance products to include Medicare supplements from nine different companies, dental-vision-hearing insurance and supplemental, catastrophic and disability insurance plans. He can be reached at 775-224-7169 or 775-450-6769. You can also call the office at Affordable Healthcare Pros at 775-883-3414.