Tuesday, August 20, 2013
No, Dude, It's Not a Trick Question
You're a healthy 28 year-old and faced with an option; pay $4,000 for health insurance, or a $95 fine. Does the President of the United States actually think that the lion's share of individuals who comprise this demographic are going to opt for the former choice?...And did he even think the damn thing through?
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31 comments:
We have to pass the bill before we can read it.
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"And did he even think the damn thing through?"
Does it matter that _Congress_ wrote and passed the bill? Nah... Those suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome just want to piss and moan. Congress wrote the bill including the RepublicanT Party's poison pills.
"You're a healthy 28 year-old and faced with an option; pay $4,000 for health insurance, or a $95 fine. Does the President of the United States actually think that the lion's share of individuals who comprise this demographic are going to opt for the former choice?"
Guessing? ... Most people will buy health insurance, even healthy 28 year olds. Those who try to game the system will eventually see the errors of their ways.
The small number of persons who do not pay for and carry car insurance does not mean the rest of the people do not _need_ to pay for and carry car insurance.
This may come as a surprise to many, but the members of both political parties in Congress helped write the ACA bill. ACA is only beginning and will improve over time.
Ema Nymton
~@:o?
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And if we are John Conyers, there's no way we are going to read what we vote on.
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"You're a healthy 28 year-old and faced with an option; pay $4,000 for health insurance, or a $95 fine."
You are also over looking a very powerful incentive. It is _$95_ plus the extreme high costs of medical treatment.
So are you really going to gamble? And even if one/two go this route, it does not negate the need for expanding medical coverage for the people.
Ema Nymton
~@:o?
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And what informed person would call such a person a "freeloader". Well, aside from the Col.
Ema misses the point as usual. People will simply pay the fine and only purchase the insurance once they get sick - to which the insurance companies will HAVE to sell it to them because of the no pre-existing condition clause. The end result (it's called "adverse selection - only sick people purchasing insurance) will be an absolute sky-rocketing of rates and an overall lowering of care....And if Miss Ema thinks that the majority of healthy young people are going to pay $3,950 more than they have to for a product that they do not need, then she is even more insane than I initially thought.
The sensible thing for a healthy young person who doesn't have insurance through their job to do would be to purchase a catastrophic and/or hospitalization plan and pay the rest of their expenses out of pocket. Obamacare unfortunately doesn't allow for this.
Pay the 95 and when you get really sick do what the American Natives did.
Ema said: "Congress wrote the bill including the RepublicanT Party's poison pills."
You have it backwards. The bill was a LOT more toxic until Republicans and some non-Koolaid-drinking Democrats inspired some changes to kick the fangs off it.
"The small number of persons who do not pay for and carry car insurance does not mean the rest of the people do not _need_ to pay for and carry car insurance."
Ema, what ARE you smoking? 50% of people in NYC _need_ to pay for and carry car insurance. 40% of young people nationwide are choosing not to own cars (and pay insurance). This is quite a large group
"This may come as a surprise to many, but the members of both political parties in Congress helped write the ACA bill. ACA is only beginning and will improve over time."
On this there are some agreement. There have been some major improvements over time: the Supreme Court blunted it some, and Obama's delaying some of the nastiest provisions (hopefully indefinitely) improve the ACA a whole lot. Yes, it is getting better.
Will said: "And if Miss Ema thinks that the majority of healthy young people are going to pay $3,950 more than they have to for a product that they do not need, then she is even more insane than I initially thought."
One very helpful and perhaps easier to pass reform to further improve the ACA would be to make this fine completely (and automatically) deductible come tax time.
So you are in favor of FORCING everyone to buy health insurance?
Before I tell you my proposal, Jerry, I would just say here that if you're going to have an individual mandate, you have to make the penalty a lot more draconian in an effort to secure compliance. Right now there's a massive discrepancy and the end result, I fear, is that only the sick people are going to end up purchasing insurance.......My proposal is mandated health savings accounts (with subsidies for poor people) that people can start accumulating at an early age (when they're probably not going to need it as much) and then supplementing that with a catastrophic care policy (either through the government or private insurance or both). This, in large measure, would take away the middle-man, and put the consumer in charge. This is the way that it works with lasik eye surgery and plastic surgery and the prices in both of those areas have come down while the quality has gone up. The third part of my plan for the chronically ill and destitute would be to do what they're doing in some of the New Jersey cities. Provide case managers and nurse practitioners to visit these people on a fairly regular basis and monitor their condition. Yes, it's expensive but it has shown to drastically reduce the number of emergency room visits and basically save a fair amount of money in the long run.
dmarks (do I have to call you Luthor?), I hear you on the delay of the employer mandate possibly being a good thing. I just can't help but think, though, that it was basically done for political reasons (pushing it past the 2014 election).
The key word is mandated. You say mandated, I say forced. Insurance premium or health savings account, the end result is the same. You are forcing people to pay. Of course, there is one difference. When your health saving account runs out, you may not have the money to continue treatment. You die. Insurance pays all costs. You live.
You can call it a mandate, Jerry, I really don't care. And if the money "runs out", as you say, that's when the catastrophic policy kicks in and there would be no disruption in treatment. My policy significantly bends the cost curve, takes a great deal of power away from the insurance companies, and empowers the individual. Obamacare, which I gather that you're defending here, bankrupts the country. Technical knockout - me.
How does it bankrupt the country. Show me the numbers, not the rhetoric.
Jerry, when Medicare first came out, the cost projections for 1990 were $12 billion. The actual cost was $100 billion. The idiots were off by 833%. Do you really think that this system will be any different. And even the preliminary costs are off in that they didn't include the $115 implementation cost (I don't know if this includes the thousands of new IRS agents or the health care navigators or not) or the $300 billion doc fix provision.......That, and you know that a shitload of people are probably going to get dumped off of their current policy and into the exchanges and that that is undoubtedly going to bleed the treasury as well.......Why are you so damned wedded to a government approach here, Jerry?
Sounds like fear mongering to me. While just today in the LA Times we have this article which says:
"The 2013 increases are lower than in many previous years, undercutting claims by critics of President Obama's health law that the 2010 legislation is dramatically driving up costs."
And this one:
"Nor is there much evidence that many employers are dropping coverage"
The rates have stabilized some but only after having spiked since the damn thing was passed. My rates went up massively in 2011 and 2012 and it was largely because of Obamacare's ridiculous mandates; parents keeping "children" on their policies until the age of 26, for example.......And do I gather that you disagree with Jimmy Hoffa and those 2 other union bosses who said that Obamacare will savagely reduce full time employment in the years to come? I thought that you usually agreed with the unions, Jerry.
That's dependent children, not any child. And ridiculous? Well, the vast majority of Americans disagree with you on that.
The initial cost figure on Obamacare was $900 billion (over 10 years). When they figured in all of the costs it rose to $1.4 trillion. And when they figured in the first 10 years of its actual implementation (2014-2023), it rose to $2.6 trillion. Still don't think that its a budget-buster, Jerry?......And still no comment on Jimmy Hoffa's opposition?
Will: To them, debt only matters when Republicans are causing it. That is why the standard line on the Left since Jan 2009 is that there is no debt problem any more. Even though Obama's record is far worse than Bush's in all ways.
So trillions of waste spending don't matter.
I'm not interested in what Jimmy says. He is entitled to his opinion.
I don't know where you are getting your numbers (seems like you don't want to provide references), but here is what the Congressional Budget Office says about costs:
When estimates are compared on a year-by-year basis, CBO and JCT’s estimate of the net budgetary impact of the ACA’s insurance coverage provisions has changed little since February 2013 and, indeed, has changed little since the legislation was being considered in March 2010. In March 2010, CBO and JCT projected that the provisions of the ACA related to health insurance coverage would cost the federal government $759 billion during fiscal years 2014 through 2019 (which was the last year in the 10-year budget window being used at that time).
Don't forget to check out their figure.
And I don't really care what Jimmy says.
I got my numbers from the Congressional Budget Office, too, Jerry; Real Clear Politics. I'll give you the link after I get out of work. I'll just say that the first projection was for 10 years of revenues and only 6 years of the program.
And the CBO computes strictly what you give it. If you give it incomplete information, you're going to get an incomplete analysis (leaving out the doc fix, administrative costs, etc.). And none of these big government entitlement programs ever come in under budget. Like I already pointed out, the bozos were off by over 800% when it came to Medicare.
And you're picking the President over the unions. Glad to have you finally on the record here.
You are reading a lot into my statement that I don't care what Jimmy says, aren't you? But then I am not surprised.
Here's the link - http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2012/07/11/obamacare_to_cost_26_trillion_over_10_years_284495.html
Will said: "dmarks (do I have to call you Luthor?),"
I might consider your request and roll it back. I know that whatever I do, or don't do, WD will take credit for it.
He actually claimed that his blog post directed at me a a week or so ago was the reason I changed my blog name several months ago.
About Hoffa and the unions: one important mandate/forcing overlooked here is that most workers in the Teamsters and SEIU/etc are in against their will. The bosses like Hoffa don't have to be accountable to anyone. Jerry does have a good point about how disconnected their opinion is.
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