Runningart2004 wrote:
About healthcare....
When you mandate a certain amount of coverage, like the ACA does, and you don’t implement some kind of hard price controls, then you get whatever premiums the insurance companies want to charge. The whole purpose of the mandate was an attempt to lower the premiums to offset the higher cost. Basically if you want all insurers to cover pre-existing conditions then the free market will result in higher premiums as a result.
So Trump saying they will magically lower premiums is a just make believe....unless the government institutes hard price controls. Otherwise they don’t control the premiums.
Alan
The mandate that you must buy health insurance increases the insurance pool and reduces risk, which reduces premiums. That was the biggest feature to save costs to the average person.
As far as covering pre-exisisting conditions, if you stay with a company or carrier and get sick, you don’t get dropped for that.
It only became an issue for those going without insurance, getting sick and then trying to get insurance. That’s no issue if you’re always insured.
Sure, insurers would save money and drop premiums if they didn’t have to cover sick people.
But they still have to be treated and can’t afford that so the medical community would have to absorb the unpaid bills and simply overcharge insurers for other things to recuperate costs.
One way to actually save costs is to have people get more checkups and catch things earlier to prevent the sicknesses and associated costs. Another feature of the ACA is that it encourages checkups by having everyone covered.
Another way to save costs would to let people die sooner when they are really sick instead of extending their life an additional three months.
Maybe not death panels but more discretion in end of life treatment.
Any answer to address healthcare must involve covering everyone.
Republicans don’t have it in them to do this. They cannot lead on this. They are not problem solvers they are not progressive because they don’t campaign on progress.