I support Ron Paul's billFollow

Ron Paul, often the governmental messiah of fringe political junkies, has introduced a bill to repeal the portions of the Health Care Bill that force people to pay into the system in one way or another. Although I'm all for health care reform, that was one stipulation that should have never been on the table, and I suspect was solely the product of health insurance lobbying.

Ron Paul's site on the matter.

How would you have proposed it?

Touche. Perhaps I've been reading too many fringe websites.

It also doesn't take into account that people who make below the federal poverty line are completely exempt, and people who make up to 400% of the federal poverty line will receive subsidies if they're not already getting them via employer benefits. (If the employer is paying a portion, the employer gets the subsidies instead.)

The "mandate" is designed to go after the Young Invincibles, the 25-35 year olds who make enough to afford health insurance (~$45,000/year or moreish, I forgot the exact numbers) and refuse to buy into it because they don't think they need it.

Edited, Apr 19th 2010 1:59pm by catwho

Many conservatives have proposed preventing insurance companies from denying coverage, even for pre-existing conditions. My understanding is that this bill does that. However, if that was all we did, people could wait until they are sick to seek coverage. The most obvious option is to do what this bill does: require people to buy in; helping those less able and (I think) penalizing those who can buy in but choose not to. Another option is to just levy a tax to pay for the whole deal like medicare does.

lol

I have no idea where you're getting your numbers from, but when I looked CNN reported the following:
If that is the case, sign me the f'uck up!

Like I said before, the cost of the "fine" is not deterrent what so ever to not purchasing health care. It is a soak of the average citizen.

So, require insurance companies to offer health coverage to anyone off the street regardless of their payment & health history, then take the "fines" for not playing by the rules and pay for another government program. Makes perfect sense lying in a field next to Lucy staring up at her diamond sky.

Because failing health is not an infringement of liberty. A criminal or military action which inflicts harm on the citizenry *is*.

Understand yet?

A fine serves two purposes. The first is that it is an incentive to buying health insurance, and the second is that it is an income source negatively correlated to people making the decision the administration wants them to--it spreads the risk just as if the healthier people were to buy a plan. You may not agree that those are desirable things to achieve, but flat out stating that it does not achieve those shows that you aren't understanding the situation, as much as you'd like to believe you are.

1. Health insurance offers some nebulous quantity of value to each person at an explicit cost. Without a fine of any sort, then so long as the value of insurance minus the cost is negative, no one will buy it. However when you attach a fine, there are some people who will buy the insurance even if the value is a net negative, because that negative is less than the fine. This is strictly an incentive system like any other sort of tax credit you've seen before.

A strange yet accurate example would be having entered a store that sells money. You could buy a $20 bill for $25 (and lose $5) or you could pay the fee for leaving the store empty handed, which is $10. This is an incentive to buy this particular product even though there is a net loss to your person.

2. The government is spreading the risk. Not only do people betting on health insurance pay into the system, but those betting not on health insurance also pay into the system, the same as betting on red and black in roulette, the same as buying negatively correlated stocks to diversify your portfolio.

It is a deterrent to having no insurance and it does spread the risk. You can argue that the method of achieving these two items is ultimately harmful to us, but to deny that these items are being achieved just shows a gross lack of understanding.

Edited, Apr 19th 2010 3:49pm by Allegory

The list of things that I don't understand is short and stops somewhere this side of the impact of human emotion on rational decisions. I have said, on many occasions, exactly what you suggest no one says. I also say what you suggest I could come back with. I'm ok with that position. It would work far better than the extortion currently enacted.

No, and no.

The small fine is no incentive to pay more money to purchase health insurance for a healthy individual. The fine is too small to provide the fear of punishment, and the option to purchase "insurance" after you get sick removes the risk factor. Looks like I understand 1. Your example assumes infirmity of some sort making it flawed in the discussion of the healthy who decide not to buy coverage indicating your lack of knowing what the f'uck we're talking about.

Your assumptions on 2 are f'ucked, too. Insurance companies will not be able to deny coverage to an individual. Healthy individuals will pay the government, not spreading the risk of the insurance companies. The insurance companies will have to cover the healthy individual when they get sick, eating all the costs of that person when they enter a risk group and reaping none of the revenue when they choose not to participate. There is currently no mechanism in place for the insurance companies to offload those costs or be compensated for them leading to them being screwed. Looks like I understand 2 pretty well, too. You on the other hand appear to be a f'ucking idiot, as usual.

Except that's not what's being proposed. Niggling little details.

It's not a punishment at all, it's a change in the opportunity cost. There is a continuous spectrum of individuals with varying degrees of health risks. For some people with very low risks these is little to gain by buying health insurance and a lot to pay. There are those with very high risks who probably already have insurance. And there are those in the middle on the fence. A fine decreases the benefits of not having health insurance so that some of those who would normally optimize having no insurance now optimize by having insurance.

So in 2016 you could be penalized $2,085 or 2.5% of your income for not owning health insurance. I just googled a random insurance plan costing $3,144 annually. This plan provides some quantity of benefit to me, if I'm a risky person it provides more and if I'm a healthy person it provides less.

There are three scenarios here. Before the fine the question of whether to buy health insurance was simple. If the value > $3,144 annually then I would buy the plan, and if the value < $3,144 annually, then I wouldn't buy the plan. The fine changes that. Because I'm now going to have to pay $2,085 for not having insurance, I will now buy the insurance if the value > $1,059 (3144-2085) and not buy the insurance if the value < $1,059 (3144-2085).

Previously anyone who valued the insurance policy between $3,144 and $1,059 would not have bought it. Now everyone who values it between $3,144 and $1,059 will switch to buying that plan and having insurance, because they optimize by buying under the fine when they previously would have optimized by not buying without it.

Why are you struggling with simple math?

Why are creating some contrived separation between paying the government or paying private companies? People who don't have insurance and get sick still cost money; they don't magically disappear. So when a person without insurance goes in for an emergency procedure, they've only paid their share of taxes for the procedure leaving the rest of the cost to everyone else. However, when they're fined for not having insurance they've paid their taxes plus the fine for that procedure, so more of the financial risk is directed to them.

The money earned from fining people has to go somewhere. It doesn't magically disappear. That money has to come back to the people who are buying insurance. The government can either increase services to the public or it can maintain current services at a lower tax cost. A fine for not buying insurance is a subsidy for those who buy insurance. The cost is spread out more evenly for everyone.




Again, it's perfectly valid to argue that none of this is good or beneficial, but it's entirely idiotic to argue that it is not being achieved.

Edited, Apr 19th 2010 5:36pm by Allegory