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I cannot believe anyone actually supports preventing their fellow citizens from having access to affordable healthcare.
Insurance is not healthcare.
Properly setting rates based on sound actuarial risk analysis does not deny anyone access to healthcare.
Understanding that private business requires profit to continue existence is a morality neutral economic fact.
Understanding that health care provided by the goods/services of others IS NOT RIGHT, but simply another set of goods and services the individual can trade for is basic understanding of the definition of rights, voluntary trade and the concept of economic scarcity. Again, perfectly neutral economic facts.
If people like me support anything, its' the understanding of how economics works, given the laws that govern economics are as immutable as gravity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RedZin
And people wonder why the term "deplorable" got tossed out there in the first place.
Look no further.
The word "deplorable" is tossed about as an appeal to ridicule based ad hominem fallacy because you have no argument that can defeat basic economic facts of the actual central argument.
I cannot believe anyone actually supports preventing their fellow citizens from having access to affordable healthcare.
That's not the problem. The problem is that "their fellow citizens" DON'T want to pay for it and expect others to fund their healthcare. Solve that, and you fix the problem. I've already explained how other developed countries do it: REGRESSIVE tax systems.
The mandate that insurers must cover those with preexisting conditions and cannot charge them proper rates based on actuarial risk analysis totally negates the concept of insurance as a risk mitigation tool. That isn't a Trump thing, or an Obama thing, or a mean/evil thing...it's a mathematical/actuarial fact thing.
If an insurance company must cover me no matter what, and they cannot charge me the proper rates based on my current health, why why why would I buy insurance until I was already sick? It makes no sense to pay premiums. You wait until you get sick, you then buy insurance, hope you get cured, then dump insurance and go back to waiting for next illness, lather, rinse, repeat.
Thing is, insurance is based on pooling premiums paid by the insured in order to have funds to pay out for claims. If nobody signs up to pay premiums (and they shouldn't, since the law forces insurers to cover them AFTER they are sick anyway), there is no pool from which to pay claims. Let time pass and the insurer is bankrupt.
When they talked bout this mandate that came with ObamaCare, people with any mathematical/actuarial sense argued vehemently against it on the exact same grounds I am arguing it now. Adverse selection was predicted, and it's exactly what happened. Young people simply stopped buying insurance because why should they, and the tax penalty was always much less than what a year of premiums would cost. So the standard model of the risk mitigation pool got wrecked. The number of people paying in decreased while the number of people taking money out increased.
Unlike government, private insurance companies cannot print their own currency and simply force new revenue at gunpoint. They have to profit or the perish. This may very well have been the plan along, to destroy the private insurance industry so that only government run healthcare could survive, who knows. But it is a certainty of inexorable mathematics that under the (a) preexisting and (b) community pricing model, private insurance cannot survive as a business.
The Math never worked - add to that the Democrats who passed this law without a single Republican vote forgot to FUND the Insurance Bailouts for when the Math failed. TeamObama just gave them the money without Congressional Approval for the funding ..... Trump kept them afloat for this year, but that won't continue. Democrats will scream a lot about "save health care" - which means "save insurance companies" - BUT they will not be willing to actually sit down and Legislate any Fixes.
They just want bailout for Big Hospitals and Big Insurance.
There is no way that each individual patient can successfully advocate for themselves.
It's the same stupid argument made for union busting -- that each individual worker can bargain for themselves against corporations.
Given that only ~8% of the American workforce belong to a union, it seems like the remaining 92% (what some would refer to as a "vast majority") are bargaining for themselves just fine.
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Originally Posted by GotHereQuickAsICould
When we organize and bargain together we can oppose corporations. But not as individuals.
You can always oppose anyone. Whether or not you get your way is an altogether different matter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GotHereQuickAsICould
Imagine a person with cancer telling the cancer treatment center that they will not pay $10,000 - $30,000 per month for cancer treatment, that they will only pay $3,000 per month, and that's their final offer.
Good luck with that one.
I wouldn't pay $3k, to be honest. I am not a believer in bankrupting my family for any reason. If my insurance and HSA funding cannot cover it without wrecking my wife's future, then my number's up and that's that. Put me on the morphine train and let me ride off into the sunset, tyvm. I am also not a believer that anyone outside of the volunteers in my insurers risk mitigation pool should be on the hook should misfortune befall me. I don't think you should be tapped to pay for my healthcare. If my preparations, insurance and savings cannot cover it, that's not your fault and you shouldn't have to pay.
-- It's an expansion of an existing program. No new bureaucracy needs to be created.
-- Private insurance is not put out of business. They can sell "Medigap" insurance.
-- Gov't subsidies can be provided to the poor for Medigap coverage, similar to the subsidies for Obamacare now.
-- Medicare has the lowest overhead of any health benefit system. HMO's and PPO's charge more because they want to make a profit.
-- For most people the extra Medicare payroll tax will be less than their private premiums now
-- MFA doesn't have to be implemented all at once. It can be done incrementally to avoid disruption, i.e., start by lowering the Medicare age from 65 to 55. Several years later drop it again to 45, etc.
Bingo.
Those in the 55-65 age group often have trouble getting jobs and one of the reasons is increased insurance costs.
If the 55+ crowd did not require company paid insurance, it would be a plus.
I cannot believe anyone actually supports preventing their fellow citizens from having access to affordable healthcare.
And people wonder why the term "deplorable" got tossed out there in the first place.
Look no further.
I thought that Hillary Clinton referring to Trump supporters as "irredeemable Deplorables" was wrong and a mistake. I think the same when you call Democrats the same thing.
I'm sure you remember that we went through MONTHS of attempting to Fix the known problems in the ACA and the Democrats refused to offer any solutions and refused to participate in any Legislation. They also VOTED in mass to defeat the Fixes to the ACA. You call that "deplorable" and perhaps it is - I call it stupidity and Political Agenda.
Given that only ~8% of the American workforce belong to a union, it seems like the remaining 92% (what some would refer to as a "vast majority") are bargaining for themselves just fine.
BS.
Every since Reagan and the Republicans launched their union busting endeavors, the wealthy have been raking in boatloads of money while the workers, those who actually produce the wealth have been getting a smaller and smaller piece of the pie.
Adjusting for inflation, real wages have barely budged for decades.
The Trump administration is going to court to try to remove the requirement for insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. But they want to delay the action until after the midterms.
Trump went from "everyone is going to have health coverage and the government is going to pay for it" to trying to take health coverage away from as many as possible. I cannot imagine how he can look people in the eye while he tries to take health coverage away from someone who has been horribly sick.
Combine this with the Medicare budget shortfall and good luck America.
Isnt it a coalition of 20 states suing the federal government to remove all of the requirements of the ACA, not the Trump administration inciting the lawsuit?
I have no doubt they can and will but people with a brain will see that Trump is the one trying to take away coverage for pre-existing conditions. If Obama gave people oxygen, Trump would try to take it away due to his sick Obama obsession.
So what! Those of us with a brain will be able to say we were right, all the while we are sitting outside the hospital, dying of a disease that we had no control of getting, and all after we paid our premiums our entire life under the belief that if we bought insurance, we'd be covered.
I'm pissed, and the fact that a bunch of empty-headed Trump Cultists will be exposed to be wrong is no comfort to me.
Before long, in most rural areas, the only person with any advanced medical education will be the pharmacists.
I guess the rural areas are getting what they voted for. Good and hard.
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