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That's not how insurance works. It's not a nondiscriminitory risk pool unless the insurer is grossly incompetent at finding a decent actuary. The 20 and 30 somethings won't subsidize the aged and infirm. They'll just go buy their insurance from someone with a decent actuary who can properly price their risk.
Same with car insurance. Just because insurance premiums in NYC for a 25-year-old male with a bad driving record are $5k doesn't mean I'm going to subsidize his rates. I'll just find an insurer who can accurately price my risk.
this is generally true but in new york state specifically the laws for health insurance basically forced the young and healthy to subsidize old people. i have a high deductable plan that is about 400 dollars a month, that in most other states would be about 50-60 bucks. i understand ny is more expensive in general, but it wasn't bc actuaries couldnt properly assess risk, it's bc they arent allowed to here.
No, I'm not wrong. The individual market pre-exchanges were heavily populated by younger people and subsidized those that were not. They are NOT seeing their premiums double for "like" coverage. They are seeing their premiums go up some for BETTER coverage. Pre-exchange a young person in our state could get an individual policy for $55-60/month. Now they are looking at about $150 pre-subsidy. Sure it looks like that is a big increase before you figure in that before their out of pocket max was $30,000...now it's $10,500....and if they had a medical condition, guess what, they GET coverage now...along with free preventive care, including many medications. People keep throwing out these "huge" premium increases, however, they don't seem to back those up with real numbers for out of pocket costs....
in most states you could have gotten a plan with a 5000 dollar deductable for the 50-60 bucks if you were young and healthy not a 30k deductable
you're right people don't often think about their benefits as being a part of their income even though they really are because they never actually see the money come and go.
one difference however is if you buy health insurance you are doing so with after tax income, where as when you receive health insurance through work you aren't taxed on its cost.
So very true, however there are those who want to tax work provided benefits like income.
Those who don't make claims {car, house, health} pay for those who do.
The young and healthy are not always going to be young and healthy.....their day will come.
Healthcare costs have been growing by leaps and bounds, well before the ACA.
Time will tell if the ACA contains those costs..... the larger the pool.....the lower the cost for the individual.
You can't expect to see a drastic change in the growth of charges overnight.
It would have been so much better if Universal Healthcare could have been implemented....but that was never going to happen. {At least not anytime soon.}
Cutting out for-profit insurance companies would have made a HUGE difference in total healthcare costs.
their day will come and that's when they should pay more.
if i buy a house in a safe area and then buy a house in a high crime area or go from an area that is not likely to see hurricanes or earthquakes to one that does i should expect my premium to go up.
if you have a car in some crime ridden ****hole it's gonna cost more to insure than it would if you moved to a nicer area.
to act like health insurance like this is in any way shape or form the same as other kinds of insurance is disingenuous at best.
the people who don't end up using their insurance much do end up subsiding those who do, but in any real kind of insurance the premiums paid are based on statistics and those statically unlikely to use it don't have to subsidize those who are.
The issue isn't just about the cost of medical treatment being spread over a broader pool it is also about one person paying a premium for their coverage and being required to help pay OTHERS premium. That is what some/many/handful object to. ACA is expanding not just the risk pool but also requiring some to help some finance it and not others.
Let me tell you this: When I was young I paid for the taxes to send other people's kids to 12 years of public school and I never had kids. I paid rent with no deductible for interest in a mortgage and did this for more than 20 years as an adult. I paid a very high car insurance rate, very high, because I lived in a major city where jerky drivers, many of them irresponsible, had terrible accidents or had expensive cars which others routinely stolen. I never tried to even think of closing the government down for all of this! I just paid my bills and went on with my life as a low paid social worker.
The people who complain about paying for health insurance so that most people are fully covered are babies, cry babies. Get a life, I say to them. Get with the program and wake up and realize that now you have health insurance that is going to protect you far more than any cheap health insurance did when you paid the lower rates due to your age. I am sure that for those low rates you did not have catastrophic insurance which Obamacare requires, for example. You should have, but you did not.
As far as the paid off mortgage goes, many old people do not have that because the past 25 years have not been easy in this country economically, and they, like many of my classmates, were helping to pay for their kids or grandkids to go to college. They are not all living high off the hog like you make it out to be. And they do not all have big pensions.
If you have complaints about them making so much or having economic security, why not go after the high rollers who are financing the Republican right wingers? They are the ones who are living off the corporate welfare dole.
no mindlessly just taking it up the butt because that's what politicians tell you to do is absolutely pathetic
i don't need the govt telling me what i need.
i on my own chose to get health insurance a long time ago, but i chose to get a high deductable plan because i don't need insurance for bs like a cold. i need it in case something catastrophic happens.
my insurance in nys is already so high bc the govt doesnt let insurance companies discriminate based on health or age which is an absolute joke and i should be mad as hell about it.when someone is effectively stealing money from you then you should be mad.I'm not old and shouldnt have to pay more because some people are old. When i help someone old with there health insurance it should be when i help my grandparents out financially and not when the govt makes me.
You're are right that not all old people are sitting on fat pensions or paid off houses- I also have absolutely no idea what that has to do with screwing over young people with health insurance.
That is he nature of pools; they are one size fits all to spread the risk .Never meant to fit individual needs. In this case its not even that all pay the same price for the same product because of subsidizes paid thru taxes and fees besides your premiums. True cost will be your premiums then what portion you pay in those taxes and fees. if they apply.
right but pools are supposed to spread risk among those who have a similar statistical chance of risk or by charging those with high risk a lot more.you don't take a great driver, charge him as much as an atrosious driver and call it pooling risk bc it's not pooling risk, it's giving the good driver the shaft.if two people in different area each have a house that is worth the same amount they don't pay them same amount of money for hurricane coverage if one of them lives in an area where hurricanes never happen and the other doesn't.
with any kind of insurance you're paying a premium which by definition has a negative expectation in order to minimize the financial blow in case it's needed.everyone's finaces are different as if everyone risk tolerance.
civilized people don't advocate stealing from other people, and they sure don't advocate for doing it in the most inefficient way possible.
See, the difference between your point of view and that of mine and others who support the ACA (we would rather have a universal single payer health plan but had to cave to the right wing to get this at least) is that we know it is not stealing and is showing some responsibility as a society to make sure we are all covered when we need it and not going to go into hock because we didn't have insurance.
I pay for public schools and libraries and the police and fire dept: I don't feel anyone is stealing from me.
That is just your take on it. To which you are entitled.
You know. I was happy when I found out about ACA. I though to myself "heck, now I can afford health insurance, YES". Today, I dont feel the same. IIhave a great opportunity to start working for the police department and actually make a decent paycheck. Then, I will be able to afford health insurance.
Currently though, I am part time. Im 34 and make roughly $23,000 a year. Oh, I also live from paycheck to paycheck. Im working on bettering my situation. But if I dont get this job, I will be facing a grim understanding; how the heck am I to afford $150 a month for the very basic bronze plan when im barely scraping by as is? I was able to get on the healthcare.gov website and look up a plan with the paultry $43 a month in subsidaries. I just dont understand. I make $23K yearly and barely receive a subsidy. Oh well, guess its better than nothing right?
How could you afford to pay for the care if you had an accident or serious illness that cost tens of thousands of dollars? Would you expect the bill to be eliminated in your favor? This is why we have to have universal health insurance.
I was a low paid professional - with a master's degree from a top university - making next to nothing and paying for my grad school loans, so I have been there, done that. I feel sympathy, but if you are working part time, can't you bag groceries or something, pet sit, or something, to pay that $150 per month? I did work part time on top of my full time social work job to pay my grad school loans. It was hard but I did it and I didn't whine about it, to be frank.
Also, at $23,000 part time, you are not saying how much part time. And you must be getting a rookie salary and that is only temporary and then you go up to a big salary with all of the benefits cops get. I don't think you are telling the whole picture here.
we are both entitled to our opinion, but taking money from one person and giving it to another is absolutely stealing- whether or not is is beneficial is another question.in this case you're literally taking money out of young healthy people's pockets and putting into older people's pockets and to those who have health problems.i'd have a lot less of a problem with it if so many people didn't treat their bodies like garbage disposals.
the whole responsible to society is a crock as well.most people who greatly benefit from other people's money couldnt give 2 ****s about all the people in the world who have it way worse than them.
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