All this time I thought the Obama health care bill was creating the crisis. There could have been much easier ways to solve the “crisis” the whitehouse has eluded to. Tort reform, sell insurance across state lines, let health care be purchased by the individual and not the company, let people pay up front for expenses to see what the true cost of health care is, stop paying for care of illegals or demand cash for payment…the list goes on and on. Forcing an entire business out of work is not an answer…but it’s a great way to institute more socialism.
“People may lack insurance, but they still get health care, and the costs get passed on to the insured, the administration said.”
So the administration’s assumption is that all uninsured citizens are deadbeats? If I said all welfare recipients were deadbeats imagine the PC uproar that would cause. When I was uninsured I paid every bill from every medical care provider from whom my family received coverage – including two child birth expenses.
First: I just want to let everyone know this is a different bob than I (who wrote the post below)
Other Bob: see my first link below which shows that while you think it would cause an uproar, most uninsured people don’t pay the bill. Only about 25% do. Numbers, not emotions my friend. They are all that matter.
The crisis (Crisis #1) is the lack of access for millions of people to the best health care system in the world. The other crisis (#1a) are the rising costs of health care. Managed care did not have the intended affect of forcing doctors to charge a reasonable price for their services. But, it’s a start. The way to deal with crisis #1 is to mandate everyone into the system and apply cost per each person. Costs would go down and crisis #1 would be solved.
Ok….let the fireworks fly….
This article and the subsequent posts will probably break a record on responses. Everything this administration has done in 3 years is a so called crisis and we can’t let a good crisis go to waste, can we? Progressive Socialists are on a mission to bankrupt the country and this is a very good start. The so called “Affordable Care Act” is anything but affordable. Why are we seeing unending rate increases from the carriers? They realize they will have to cover everyone regardless of medical conditions. No one can be denied coverage so they can wait until they get sick and then get coverage. They also have to cover all the failure to launch crowd until they are 26. There was no tort reform done so the lawyers can still have a field day suing doctors and providers in most jurisdictions. Gee, if it is so great, how come thousands of waivers have been granted businesses, unions and even AARP from it? If the Supremes don’t strike this down, the new President should repeal, defund and do away with HHS.
I understand your frustration. We seriously need tort reform! But, we already have a “socialist” system in that anyone can go to an ER and not be denied treatment. That includes a lot of people with no money and no insurance. You and I pay for that. This one aspect of the current system is such a big reason why costs (paid for by you and me) continue to escalate. That equals unfunded socialism. It’s why hospitals charge lazy insurance companies $20 for a band-aid. So, the “crisis” of lack of access and increasing costs has no end in site under the old system. We don’t yet know what the Affordable Care act will bring as most of it has not yet been implemented. True, tort reform is a sorely missing piece. Not sure where you are getting at with your aversion to covering anyone regardless of condition. What are sick people supposed to do, just die or lose their house? Maybe you don’t have a serious medical condition. Regarding the “failure to launch” crowd. I guess you don’t have kids. I don’t want my kid on my policy after college but I am glad it’s there if he needs it. Yes, I pay for that. Gladly. Those after the age of 19 with no access to health care will wind up in the ER and you and I will pay a higher price for that. No matter what we wish for, the sick and needy will not go away. We have to deal with it or the system will eventually explode. That’s not a bleeding heart observation. It’s purely an economic view.
Note page 4 of 15: “Projected federal, state, and
local spending available to pay for the
care of the uninsured in 2004 is $34.6
billion—” I realize this was in 2004, but regardless, 34.6 billion divided by 312,000,000 equals about 110 dollars a year per person. Sorry, this is not what is cuasing the crises. We can afford 110 dollars a year. Unless you are trying to say the government is making that number higher, in which case I agree entirely, they should be removed from the equation right? ;) Those are the only options though. These numbers are not debatable.
Moving forward: Note that if your comment about the insurance going down was meant to say this was from having more people in it this is vastly incorrect even as a matter of history, unless of course you are trying to say that the younger population having a higher insured rate will stem the costs. Now you’ll really have to keep with me. Our population is about 312,000,000. Perhaps you need some math spelled out as to why a mandate won’t work and why this bill is a failure? Stay with me.
At one point is it safe to say that in the 80’s we had millions less insureds (as population was smaller). Did adding millions of insureds to an already flawed system help before? No. so it is not the number as I already stated, it is the target younger premium insureds being added that you believe will bring down the pool of risk. It is the only possibility. See a recent article on here: http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2011/12/16/227749.htm
See a problem? Part of the healthcare law already allowed 2.5 million people (from 19-25), to enter the system in a way that did not and could not reduce cost. Those people now technically get if for free, though you could argue their parents pay the premium, it did not bring down costs for the rest of us. Either way, rates increased at the standard pace they have been, meaning no effect can be measured. 2.5 million is a problem to be removed and here is why: 16% of the populatin is uninsured. If the goal is to get lower risk insureds in (the younger uninsured) then we just added 2.5 million with no effect, out of just under 50 million total uninsureds. Oops. Mistake.
Or more specifically from my last article “Since the policy helping young adults took effect in September 2010, the percentage of adults ages 19 to 25 covered by a private health insurance plan has increased to 73 percent in June from 64 percent, the Department of Health and Human Services said.”
So we added 9%, in comparison to an old amount of 64% Again, stay with me. If adding 2.5 million is 9%, then we need to add 27% more. 27/9 = 3. 3 more 2.5 million additions are possible in that age group or: 7.5 million can be added in 19-25, or out of 50 million, with another 2.5 already added we have removed 10 million of the lower cost insureds out of 50 million. Now only 40 million people can be added in the age group 25+ out of 312,000,000 people. Remind me, did adding that 2.5 million bring down costs? No. Doing the math, we have insured 20% of the people who need to be added in the 19-25 age group with no effect. You believe this will change with the other additions? I think not. More importantly, you forget that those 43-64, actually are a larger section of the population than 19-30. I’m allowing an 11 year gap intentionally due to the substantial difference in risk in these two age groups as opposed to how many people there are in those ages. 43-64 is where most costs come from. Another oops. Not only did we add 20% of the younger population who have the lower risk with no effect on premiums, the older population already out weighs the younger in terms of numbers in these age groups. This tips the scale further into high risk. Not further into low risk. So when we are now working with adding the rest of them, do you have any numbers, any NUMBERS (as in the number of people high risk to low risk) to show that the lower cost insureds will outweigh the high cost (the only way to decrease costs) in such a measure that will lower the premiums even 10%? Answer: No. No one has this number. Democrats pretend they do. They don’t. They are just arguing concepts at this point, with no proof. Concepts that force people to buy insurance, does not bring down rates, and seems only to help expand the number of people from which premiums are collected.
We should be focusing on costs. Not insurance. Insurance has to compete with each other. If they could lower costs to get more clients, then they would. But the COSTS are mostly non-insurance driven. It’s time to get on that.
That was quite a treatise Bob. It is too bad that the Progressive Socialist crowd just doesn’t get it. They swallow the Obamacare mandated 2,700 page monstrocity hook, line and sinker. You are right that the young under 26 “failure to launch” kids are not being added to the health insurance policy count. They are just on mom and dad’s policy for free. Of course, mom and dad are bearing the burden of continuing to cover them with the rate increases the companies are giving out. By the way, the young people who do get out on there own will not buy Health Insurance until they get sick because this law says no one can be turned down due to pre-existing conditions. They would rather pay a fine than buy it until they need it. This law is so bad on so many levels it is no wonder so many people are for repeal.
D, about the only thing we agree on is the need for Tort Reform in this system, but the Lawyer lobby will not permit that. Also, our government is made up of lawyers and they don’t want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. By the way, we didn’t need a 2,700 page monstrocity that legal scholars can’t even understand to straighten out the healthcare issue in this country. We could have done a 100 page bill without all the Utopian pie in the sky Progressive nonsense and solved it by now. By the way, you made a comment about lazy insurance companies paying $20 for a bandaid. Most have networks established to greatly discount what a hospital can charge. It is too bad Medicare doesn’t have checks to catch the vendors, hospitals and doctors for trying to overcharge for services not rendered.
If I could get my hands on it, I would have no trouble ripping 2,600 pages out of it. I saw a picture of it after it was passed, and it is 3 feet tall. What we saw the President sign was the signature page. There is no way we was going to let the American People see the entire thing or there would have been even more outrage than there has been. Is it any wonder that no one read this bill before they voted on it? Each lawmaker would have had to have a staff of 20 to read sections of it and make notes. Nancy said we had to pass it so we could see what was in it. Guess what, from what we have gleaned in the past year and a half, we hate it even more. Are we surprised that several thousand businesses, unions, AARP across the country have sought waivers from it? Why is Congress and the administration exempt from it if it is so good for America.
This argument is “the ends justifies the means” and nothing more. Crying “it’s a crisis”, “it’s an emergency”, “it’s national security” is basically the same argument that was used to lock away Americans of Japanese ancestry after Pearl Harbor. If the law can’t be readily defended under a constitutional argument (please spare us the commerce clause argument) then it should be killed.
If mandating insurance coverage is constitutional under the commerce clause then tell me why Congress cannot mandate all homeowners buy flood insurance regardless of their exposure to floods–after all flood damages are certainly commerce and many flood situations cause damages across state lines as well as the fact many properties are mortaged and mortgages are sold across state lines.
Mandating insurance coverage for all lines may be just around the corner and we will need to create another Federal Bureaucracy to “regulate” it since they are really into regulation of everything we eat, breathe, energy use, healthcare. You name it and they will want to regulate it and tax us up to our eyeballs. It is the classic Big Brother approach. Also, we have a President who states that Capitalism doesn’t work and has never worked since the country was founded. How do we like having a Marxist President?
All this time I thought the Obama health care bill was creating the crisis. There could have been much easier ways to solve the “crisis” the whitehouse has eluded to. Tort reform, sell insurance across state lines, let health care be purchased by the individual and not the company, let people pay up front for expenses to see what the true cost of health care is, stop paying for care of illegals or demand cash for payment…the list goes on and on. Forcing an entire business out of work is not an answer…but it’s a great way to institute more socialism.
“People may lack insurance, but they still get health care, and the costs get passed on to the insured, the administration said.”
So the administration’s assumption is that all uninsured citizens are deadbeats? If I said all welfare recipients were deadbeats imagine the PC uproar that would cause. When I was uninsured I paid every bill from every medical care provider from whom my family received coverage – including two child birth expenses.
First: I just want to let everyone know this is a different bob than I (who wrote the post below)
Other Bob: see my first link below which shows that while you think it would cause an uproar, most uninsured people don’t pay the bill. Only about 25% do. Numbers, not emotions my friend. They are all that matter.
The true root of the crisis is great electronics that keep us sedintary, stress of the modern world and french fries.
Actually, that does not sound easier at all. More effective, maybe, but a lot more difficult in practice, with uncertain results.
That’s a novel argument for violating the Constitution.
The crisis (Crisis #1) is the lack of access for millions of people to the best health care system in the world. The other crisis (#1a) are the rising costs of health care. Managed care did not have the intended affect of forcing doctors to charge a reasonable price for their services. But, it’s a start. The way to deal with crisis #1 is to mandate everyone into the system and apply cost per each person. Costs would go down and crisis #1 would be solved.
Ok….let the fireworks fly….
This article and the subsequent posts will probably break a record on responses. Everything this administration has done in 3 years is a so called crisis and we can’t let a good crisis go to waste, can we? Progressive Socialists are on a mission to bankrupt the country and this is a very good start. The so called “Affordable Care Act” is anything but affordable. Why are we seeing unending rate increases from the carriers? They realize they will have to cover everyone regardless of medical conditions. No one can be denied coverage so they can wait until they get sick and then get coverage. They also have to cover all the failure to launch crowd until they are 26. There was no tort reform done so the lawyers can still have a field day suing doctors and providers in most jurisdictions. Gee, if it is so great, how come thousands of waivers have been granted businesses, unions and even AARP from it? If the Supremes don’t strike this down, the new President should repeal, defund and do away with HHS.
I understand your frustration. We seriously need tort reform! But, we already have a “socialist” system in that anyone can go to an ER and not be denied treatment. That includes a lot of people with no money and no insurance. You and I pay for that. This one aspect of the current system is such a big reason why costs (paid for by you and me) continue to escalate. That equals unfunded socialism. It’s why hospitals charge lazy insurance companies $20 for a band-aid. So, the “crisis” of lack of access and increasing costs has no end in site under the old system. We don’t yet know what the Affordable Care act will bring as most of it has not yet been implemented. True, tort reform is a sorely missing piece. Not sure where you are getting at with your aversion to covering anyone regardless of condition. What are sick people supposed to do, just die or lose their house? Maybe you don’t have a serious medical condition. Regarding the “failure to launch” crowd. I guess you don’t have kids. I don’t want my kid on my policy after college but I am glad it’s there if he needs it. Yes, I pay for that. Gladly. Those after the age of 19 with no access to health care will wind up in the ER and you and I will pay a higher price for that. No matter what we wish for, the sick and needy will not go away. We have to deal with it or the system will eventually explode. That’s not a bleeding heart observation. It’s purely an economic view.
D:
I doubt very much you have researched what you said. You’re spitting out concepts, not purely an economic view.
See:
http://www.kff.org/uninsured/upload/The-Cost-of-Care-for-the-Uninsured-What-Do-We-Spend-Who-Pays-and-What-Would-Full-Coverage-Add-to-Medical-Spending.pdf
Note page 4 of 15: “Projected federal, state, and
local spending available to pay for the
care of the uninsured in 2004 is $34.6
billion—” I realize this was in 2004, but regardless, 34.6 billion divided by 312,000,000 equals about 110 dollars a year per person. Sorry, this is not what is cuasing the crises. We can afford 110 dollars a year. Unless you are trying to say the government is making that number higher, in which case I agree entirely, they should be removed from the equation right? ;) Those are the only options though. These numbers are not debatable.
Moving forward: Note that if your comment about the insurance going down was meant to say this was from having more people in it this is vastly incorrect even as a matter of history, unless of course you are trying to say that the younger population having a higher insured rate will stem the costs. Now you’ll really have to keep with me. Our population is about 312,000,000. Perhaps you need some math spelled out as to why a mandate won’t work and why this bill is a failure? Stay with me.
At one point is it safe to say that in the 80’s we had millions less insureds (as population was smaller). Did adding millions of insureds to an already flawed system help before? No. so it is not the number as I already stated, it is the target younger premium insureds being added that you believe will bring down the pool of risk. It is the only possibility. See a recent article on here:
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2011/12/16/227749.htm
See a problem? Part of the healthcare law already allowed 2.5 million people (from 19-25), to enter the system in a way that did not and could not reduce cost. Those people now technically get if for free, though you could argue their parents pay the premium, it did not bring down costs for the rest of us. Either way, rates increased at the standard pace they have been, meaning no effect can be measured. 2.5 million is a problem to be removed and here is why: 16% of the populatin is uninsured. If the goal is to get lower risk insureds in (the younger uninsured) then we just added 2.5 million with no effect, out of just under 50 million total uninsureds. Oops. Mistake.
Or more specifically from my last article “Since the policy helping young adults took effect in September 2010, the percentage of adults ages 19 to 25 covered by a private health insurance plan has increased to 73 percent in June from 64 percent, the Department of Health and Human Services said.”
So we added 9%, in comparison to an old amount of 64% Again, stay with me. If adding 2.5 million is 9%, then we need to add 27% more. 27/9 = 3. 3 more 2.5 million additions are possible in that age group or: 7.5 million can be added in 19-25, or out of 50 million, with another 2.5 already added we have removed 10 million of the lower cost insureds out of 50 million. Now only 40 million people can be added in the age group 25+ out of 312,000,000 people. Remind me, did adding that 2.5 million bring down costs? No. Doing the math, we have insured 20% of the people who need to be added in the 19-25 age group with no effect. You believe this will change with the other additions? I think not. More importantly, you forget that those 43-64, actually are a larger section of the population than 19-30. I’m allowing an 11 year gap intentionally due to the substantial difference in risk in these two age groups as opposed to how many people there are in those ages. 43-64 is where most costs come from. Another oops. Not only did we add 20% of the younger population who have the lower risk with no effect on premiums, the older population already out weighs the younger in terms of numbers in these age groups. This tips the scale further into high risk. Not further into low risk. So when we are now working with adding the rest of them, do you have any numbers, any NUMBERS (as in the number of people high risk to low risk) to show that the lower cost insureds will outweigh the high cost (the only way to decrease costs) in such a measure that will lower the premiums even 10%? Answer: No. No one has this number. Democrats pretend they do. They don’t. They are just arguing concepts at this point, with no proof. Concepts that force people to buy insurance, does not bring down rates, and seems only to help expand the number of people from which premiums are collected.
We should be focusing on costs. Not insurance. Insurance has to compete with each other. If they could lower costs to get more clients, then they would. But the COSTS are mostly non-insurance driven. It’s time to get on that.
That was quite a treatise Bob. It is too bad that the Progressive Socialist crowd just doesn’t get it. They swallow the Obamacare mandated 2,700 page monstrocity hook, line and sinker. You are right that the young under 26 “failure to launch” kids are not being added to the health insurance policy count. They are just on mom and dad’s policy for free. Of course, mom and dad are bearing the burden of continuing to cover them with the rate increases the companies are giving out. By the way, the young people who do get out on there own will not buy Health Insurance until they get sick because this law says no one can be turned down due to pre-existing conditions. They would rather pay a fine than buy it until they need it. This law is so bad on so many levels it is no wonder so many people are for repeal.
D, about the only thing we agree on is the need for Tort Reform in this system, but the Lawyer lobby will not permit that. Also, our government is made up of lawyers and they don’t want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. By the way, we didn’t need a 2,700 page monstrocity that legal scholars can’t even understand to straighten out the healthcare issue in this country. We could have done a 100 page bill without all the Utopian pie in the sky Progressive nonsense and solved it by now. By the way, you made a comment about lazy insurance companies paying $20 for a bandaid. Most have networks established to greatly discount what a hospital can charge. It is too bad Medicare doesn’t have checks to catch the vendors, hospitals and doctors for trying to overcharge for services not rendered.
Did you just say that we could have solved the health care crisis in this country with a 100 page bill? Where is this bill? Can I read it?
If I could get my hands on it, I would have no trouble ripping 2,600 pages out of it. I saw a picture of it after it was passed, and it is 3 feet tall. What we saw the President sign was the signature page. There is no way we was going to let the American People see the entire thing or there would have been even more outrage than there has been. Is it any wonder that no one read this bill before they voted on it? Each lawmaker would have had to have a staff of 20 to read sections of it and make notes. Nancy said we had to pass it so we could see what was in it. Guess what, from what we have gleaned in the past year and a half, we hate it even more. Are we surprised that several thousand businesses, unions, AARP across the country have sought waivers from it? Why is Congress and the administration exempt from it if it is so good for America.
So, they create a crisis and then they create a government solution. Socialism to save us from ourselves.
This argument is “the ends justifies the means” and nothing more. Crying “it’s a crisis”, “it’s an emergency”, “it’s national security” is basically the same argument that was used to lock away Americans of Japanese ancestry after Pearl Harbor. If the law can’t be readily defended under a constitutional argument (please spare us the commerce clause argument) then it should be killed.
If mandating insurance coverage is constitutional under the commerce clause then tell me why Congress cannot mandate all homeowners buy flood insurance regardless of their exposure to floods–after all flood damages are certainly commerce and many flood situations cause damages across state lines as well as the fact many properties are mortaged and mortgages are sold across state lines.
Mandating insurance coverage for all lines may be just around the corner and we will need to create another Federal Bureaucracy to “regulate” it since they are really into regulation of everything we eat, breathe, energy use, healthcare. You name it and they will want to regulate it and tax us up to our eyeballs. It is the classic Big Brother approach. Also, we have a President who states that Capitalism doesn’t work and has never worked since the country was founded. How do we like having a Marxist President?