Obamacare strikes again

^^^Looks like we have positively identified our next active shooter^^^

Lib Rules wrote:

So, have you offered a solution? All I see is complaining.

Solution: Get a job & purchase your own healthcare insurance of your choice....Or choose to work for a place that has good health benefits. The theme here being "choice."

That, or choose not to get a job, he a $hit bag co-dependent on others and spent any money you do come across on tattoo's, booze, cigarettes and the lotto ...anything but health insurance!

I keep seeing $ signs here and huge amounts of money being talked about for monthly plans etc. We can't surely be talking about healthcare can we?

The real answer is to put everyone on Medicare. It is the most efficient health insurance system we have in this country. Even my ultra-conservative parents love it.

The problem is that insurance company profits and ultra-bloated hospital prices get in the way of offering care at an affordable price. But Medicare is different. It only pays the cost of care plus a fixed profit margin for the provider.

If we put everyone on Medicare, everyone's cost would go down, and insurance companies would stop raking in billions for doing us the grand favor of shuffling paper.

Please read this article on hospital billing practices. Hospitals are cash cows that are ripping everyone off big time. It is the longest article ever run by Time magazine. It was so good I couldn't put it down:

http://www.uta.edu/faculty/story/2311/Misc/2013,2,26,MedicalCostsDemandAndGreed.pdf

I will give you that there are issues with Obamacare.

The number one issue is uncertainty.

People and companies are uncertain how they will be affected.

And the uncertainty means risk which could lead to cost.

For example, if you have an illness where the affects are uncertain it will cost more to insure.

If you have experience with an illness, you know how to manage and project the costs, and it will be cheaper to insure.

But the fundamentals of the law are good.

It's good if everyone has coverage because it spreads the cost. That's the number one thing that would make it affordable.

Everyone likes that pre-existing conditions cannot be a reason to be denied coverage. And everyone constantly being covered helps that.

People seem to like allowing you to be on your parent's coverage until you are 26. These are healthy people anyway so that doesn't add much cost but it's nice assurance.

Having available exchanges for options to find coverage is a good concept. And the subsidies are a good investment in the health of the people.

The exchanges need to be better and hopefully will be over time.

There are some aspects of the law that may need to be altered or eliminated over time - as opposed to repeal and replace because we know it won't be replaced and the popular benefits would go away.

Back to the cost;

Like I said, uncertainty hurts. And as long as people aren't united about accepting it, there will be uncertainty.

I am sure some people are being over treated and we are being over charged by providers.

The 80/20 rule where admin costs can't be more than 20% of premiums is OK but I am sure they are getting around that.

Cancer.

I hate to say it but cancer treatments are becoming so effective at extending lives that it really means additional years of high costs to treat those people which gets absorbed by everyone.

I'm pretty sure that we like our loved ones being saved from cancer and other illnesses but we have to accept this as an additional cost.

So those opposed to Obamacare, lay out the specifics of what you think the cost drivers are that link Obamacare to higher healthcare costs.

And propose what you would keep and what you would change.

selfish much wrote:

1%er problem. Try looking beyond yourself.

I personally "look beyond myself" quite often. However, I don't believe that I should be expected to do so when purchasing a good or service for my own use.

If I go to the car dealership to buy a small sedan, I don't expect to be told "some people buy a sedan only to find out later on that they actually needed a pickup truck, so we're going to require you to buy a pickup truck for twice the price." In deciding to buy a sedan, I have determined that I don't need a pickup truck often enough to buy my own, and I have accepted the fact that I will need to rent a pickup truck if I end up needing one. I really don't need to be told that I have to buy a different product based on someone else's idea of what my risk tolerance should be.

You may go to a car dealership to buy a small sedan but you only drive yourself and feel that you don't need the extra seat belts or air bags that come with the car.

But you still have to get them and pay for them.

L L wrote:

You may go to a car dealership to buy a small sedan but you only drive yourself and feel that you don't need the extra seat belts or air bags that come with the car.

But you still have to get them and pay for them.

1) I don't have to buy it at all if I don't want to. In the event that I am unwilling to pay the cost associated with the extra capacity, I can simply forgo purchasing a car and commute by other means. Not the case with health "insurance."

2) The car is designed the way it is largely because that's what customers want, not because the government has stepped in and required us all to buy cars with X number of seats. Big difference between a buying something with more capacity than necessary of my own volition, and being forced to buy more capacity than I desire. The former is necessarily a Pareto move (or else I wouldn't make the purchase).

1. You don't have to buy health insurance.

2. The government has made numerous requirements for cars.

Hellooooo? wrote:

1. You don't have to buy health insurance.

2. The government has made numerous requirements for cars.

1) I guess you're right, in that I am physically able to break the law. Assuming that I am going to follow the law, I do have to buy the "insurance" that the government has deemed appropriate, even if that differs from the product that I have decided I need.

2) That's why I used the word "largely." The number of seats in a car (the example under discussion) is not mandated by the government.

Hellooooo? wrote:

1. You don't have to buy health insurance.

2. The government has made numerous requirements for cars.

This is classic liberal tripe. I assume you don't think one needs to pay taxes either. Just don't pay them and then get fined and thrown in jail but nobody is forcing you to pay them either.

The requirements the government imposes on cars are largely safety and environmental so both you and everyone else is better off if cars have air bags, a catalytic converter, get at least x mpg and can absorb crashes up to certain mpg. If the government started mandating that every car also has to have a ski rack (even ones sold in hawaii), tinted windows (due do the lobbying effort of the companies that tint windows) and dice hanging from the rear view mirror (due to the lobbying effort of the companies that make felt dice), then you can be sure that most people would be very pissed off. Basically everyone not benefiting financially from forcing everyone else to buy these useless items and then the whole cadre of ignorant liberals, like yourself, who have been brainwashed into thinking it's a good thing.

personal use wrote:

Hellooooo? wrote:

1. You don't have to buy health insurance.

1) I guess you're right, in that I am physically able to break the law. Assuming that I am going to follow the law, I do have to buy the "insurance" that the government has deemed appropriate, even if that differs from the product that I have decided I need.

You are incorrect. You are not breaking a law not buying health insurance. You pay a tax.

"The annual fee for not having insurance in 2014 is $95 per adult and $47.50 per child (up to $285 for a family), or it's 1% of your household income above the tax return filing threshold for your filing status – whichever is greater."

I'm not a liberal.

That's what you think. No conservative in his right mind would delusionally think that you don't "need" to buy health insurance and that safety/emissions standards on cars is the equivalent to requiring single males to pay extra for dental/eye coverage for children but NOT for the actual person paying for the insurance.

I've been calling a trainwreck since day one in error. Train wrecks are unpredictable accidents, whereas Obamacare was an easily foreseeable catastrophe where the adults in the room told the children exactly what would happen, and now it is...

Broken Law wrote:

You are incorrect. You are not breaking a law not buying health insurance. You pay a tax.

"The annual fee for not having insurance in 2014 is $95 per adult and $47.50 per child (up to $285 for a family), or it's 1% of your household income above the tax return filing threshold for your filing status – whichever is greater."

http://www.obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-individual-mandate/

First sentence from the linked article: "ObamaCare’s individual mandate requires that most Americans obtain and maintain health insurance."

What do you call something that is mandated and required by the government? That sounds like a law.

personal use wrote:

Broken Law wrote:

You are incorrect. You are not breaking a law not buying health insurance. You pay a tax.

"The annual fee for not having insurance in 2014 is $95 per adult and $47.50 per child (up to $285 for a family), or it's 1% of your household income above the tax return filing threshold for your filing status – whichever is greater."

http://www.obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-individual-mandate/

First sentence from the linked article: "ObamaCare’s individual mandate requires that most Americans obtain and maintain health insurance."

What do you call something that is mandated and required by the government? That sounds like a law.

Keep trying. You are not required to buy health insurance. You will not be tossed in jail. You will pay a tax as noted. The choice is yours, exactly what you are demanding.

The Broken Laws wrote:

personal use wrote:

First sentence from the linked article: "ObamaCare’s individual mandate requires that most Americans obtain and maintain health insurance."

What do you call something that is mandated and required by the government? That sounds like a law.

Keep trying. You are not required to buy health insurance. You will not be tossed in jail. You will pay a tax as noted. The choice is yours, exactly what you are demanding.

By that logic, I am not required to obey the speed limit, either. I can just pay a fee instead.

Ha! probably so.. I've been in the health insurance business for a long time, and I can say from experience that ACA is a predictable unmitigated disaster.

Only one with a retarded lack of knowledge of basic economics and risk mgmnt (*cough* Keith Stone *cough*) could swallow the idea that believe centralized health insurance is a cost effective concept.

The problem with health insurance pre-ACA was that it was heavily regulated by govt. So of course the solution was to.....greatly increase govt regulation and interference..

The really nutty thing about this is that anyone can see what a catastrophe Obamacare has been. It's not exactly a secret. Yet, we still have the Keith Stones of the world belligerently insisting the earth is flat...