yossarian wrote:
Let's say the plan takes effect as written:
1. Everyone buys insurance (or pays a fine).
2. Insurance companies cannot refuse anyone coverage for any reason, meaning you can switch at will.
As an insured person I will no longer be paying for others and I can buy any plan I want. Further, they cannot refuse to cover me if I become sick or jack up the rates beyond a certain point.
Your rates will go up. They have to since the total cost of coverage has gone up. It's not rocket science or anything.
Quote:
As an uninsured person one could buy into any plan at any time even when you are sick (I should note here that in the US pregnancy is a pre-existing condition now and as such, if you change insurance while pregnant the new company does not have to cover it. Go team USA!) Now you do have to pay a fine in the mean time, but if you get sick, you do not just have to die.
Which is why the rates will go up for everyone else. So you are paying more than you were before (which was zero) *and* everyone else is paying more than they were before. Brilliant plan!
Quote:
As an employer, you can now hire very sick people. In the past, they could ruin your insurance coverage for all (if your business was small enough) because no one would cover you.
As an employer you're not going to hire very sick people because very sick people tend to not be very productive workers. I'm pretty sure that insurance rates is somewhere down around number 50 on the list of reasons an employer wont hire someone with say terminal cancer. Is this really the upside you're counting on to turn this whole thing into a positive?
Quote:
Yes, there will be issues, but the main problems with the US system are cured.
Huh? We have the same system. We have the same layers of bureaucracy and waste. The only thing the health care law did was put more requirements on the existing system, thus increasing the total cost to everyone. It didn't actually fix anything at all, much less "cure" it.
Quote:
But none of these are why varus is wrong. In fact, under only these considerations it *might* get worse for those of us with insurance who stay healthy until age 65 at which we are (shock, gasp horror) covered by the government anyhow.
It will be worse for the vast majority of people in their teens and twenties who are healthy and don't need to spend money on health insurance while they are still starting their careers. It'll be worse for those slightly older who do need some health insurance and have now been in their careers long enough to afford it, but now see their premiums increase. It'll be worse for those who are seeking those jobs as well, since the increased overhead cost for each employee will make hiring decisions more difficult for potential employers. And it'll be worse for the elderly since the bulk of the money funding the new system (but not enough to actually cover the increased costs) will come out of the medicare that they have been paying into their whole lives in addition to the insurance premiums they paid. So we make them pay twice and they get maybe the same thing.
The *only* people who are better off under the new system are people who have never worked and who have no one to support or help them and who find themselves with some sort of expensive medical condition. That's a pretty darn small percentage of the whole.
Quote:
Right now most Americans either do not have health coverage or do not have enough. Meaning when they get sick, they have to wait until they are about to die and then go to the hospital, at which point the hospital *must* treat them. This is very expensive and inefficient, in that if these cases were caught earlier they would be treated at vastly less cost and better outcomes.
Here's why you are wrong. It is true that the cost to treat someone who shows up at the emergency room is higher than the cost to treat that same person earlier. But that's only the case if the thing they are showing up for was preventable. So this excludes all accidental injuries. It also precludes all the people who got sick suddenly, or would not have gone to a doctor a week or two earlier anyway. People don't get the flu a little bit a month before showing up at the ER. They feel a little sick, and then a few days later they're *very* sick and stumble off to get medical help. Guess what? People with insurance do the exact same thing. When I got a serious ear infection about 5 years ago, I didn't call up a doctor and make an appointment. I showed up at an urgent care and got treatment.
The supposed cost savings isn't as great as some try to make it out to be.
The flip side is that by providing *everyone* with the so-called "preventative care", we incur and automatic cost every year for each person. So someone who without coverage would simply never go to a doctor and might go a decade or two without getting seriously sick and costing the whole system a dime will now go get regular checkups and cost the whole system money constantly. It's not hard to do the math and realize that the percentage of the total population who get sick and require care each year is small. When you add up the cost to provide preventative care for each and every one of them (since we don't know which ones will get sick), and compare it to the cost to treat just the ones who actually do get sick after the fact, we find that it'll cost a lot less doing it the way we're doing it than the way that the left proposes.
It's a completely fallacious argument. They compare the cost to care for one person who ends out in the ER ahead of time in cases where the illness was preventable. They ignore the volume of cases where the illness was not preventable *and* they don't consider the cost to provide that preventative care to all the people who didn't get sick that year. When you do an actual assessment of the total cost you realize pretty quickly that the numbers just don't add up. We will spend *more* money doing it that way. Not less.
Of course, that's beside the point since Obamacare only kinda goes halfway on that anyway. It's the worse possible combination. We have to care for them after they get sick *and* the insurance industry has to pay for it. Which I suppose is pretty much the same as the way things are now. One way or another, those who pay for their health care will carry the cost for those who don't. So not really changed in that regard. However, now the industry has to cover costs it didn't before, which will ***** the rest of us.
Quote:
Few have asked that this be reversed - as far as I know, no one in public office.
Are you kidding?
It's a
Fox News link, but it was just the first recent example the google gave me.
Quote:
Mississippi Rep. Gene Taylor has become the first Democratic co-sponsor of a Republican effort to repeal the health care law, joining 172 GOPers to call for a vote to end the legislation.
There are quite a few people in public office who are actively seeking to repeal the health care law. This is about a Democrat joining ranks with Republicans to try to do this. Perhaps you should step outside your liberal bubble once in awhile and see the real world. Just a thought.
