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Originally Posted by jojajn
What coverage would they have provided their employees if Obamacare did not exist?
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Employers are not obligated to provide health care plans.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jojajn
What law existed regarding employer provided health insurance before Obamacare?
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Laws...plural.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jojajn
These wage ceilings no longer exist today, so what is your point?
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That would be difficult to present to someone who doesn't understand the history of health care in the US.
In the post-WW I Era, there was rampant Real (Monetary) Inflation running at 15%-25% annually. That led to the 1925 Recession and collapse of the housing bubble, triggering the start of the Great Depression.
Hospitals felt it just like everyone else, so in 1927, some hospitals began offering insurance ---
in order to keep revenues flowing.
Wow, how altruistic is that?
With the 1928 Recession, these hospital-issued insurance plans started to take off. The best documented plan was that offered by [what is now] Baylor University Hospital to the Dallas County Public Schools....
....$6 for 21 Days of Hospitalization.
Note how it meets the legal definition of "insurance"...
Black's: Insurance is a contract whereby for a stipulated consideration, one party undertakes to compensate the other for loss on a specific subject by specified perils
While that happened to be a group plan, as an individual, you could purchase 28 Days of Hospitalization, or 60 Days of Hospitalization or whatever you wanted that met your needs and your budget.
That is the Free Market in action with Capitalist Property Theory.
Continuing....the 1928 Recession ends in the Summer of 1929, and then the US is hit with another recession Summer of 1930. Those hospitalization plans become popular, so popular, that the American Hospital Association forms a committee in 1933 to study those plans in detail,
giving guidance to member hospitals on plan costs and features....
That is not Free Market Economics.....that is Soviet-style Command Economics.
The competition in the health care sector starts running like a raped ape. Competition is cut-throat, to the point that member-hospitals of the American Hospital Association are slitting each other's throats.
To halt or reduce competition, in 1939 the American Hospital Association now starts dictating plans to member hospitals and grouping member hospitals together to pit against non-member hospitals, in an attempt to drive non-member hospitals out of business....
....wow, how altruistic is that?
That is anti-Free Market. It is interference in the Market. What the American Hospital Association did (and still does) is no different than what the American Federation of Dairy Farmers does.
And the American Federation of Dairy Farmers is Monsanto, Cargill, Con-Agra, and a few other giant corporate dairy farms that have banded together to buy legislation to drive competitors out of business.
Who is for that?
One cannot oppose the American Federation of Dairy Farmers, while simultaneously embracing the American Hospital Association ---- any interference in the Market is bad, and harms consumers...period.
Pizza is a good analogy. You want a small plain cheese pizza, but the American Hospital Association is forcing you to pay for for a double extra-large double every-and-all topping pizza, whether you want it or not.
Because what the hospitals are offering --- insurance companies aren't involved here --- looks like insurance, States (hard pressed for revenues of any kind) start eye-balling these hospital insurance plans.
The American Hospital Association then starts bribing State legislatures to exempt the hospitals from all insurance regulations. If you study health care history, these are referred to as "
enabling laws" or "
enabling legislation" --- since the laws enabled hospitals to skirt all of the State-level insurance laws, including fiduciary responsibility.
Under the various State insurance laws, an insurance company is required to have sufficient assets, including a certain percentage of cash-on-hand, in order to cover all possible losses and payouts....
....the American Hospital Association exempted all of its members from those legal requirements.
As a result, in 1946, the American Hospital Association formed the Blue Cross insurance company.
In the interim period, Wage Inflation drove up Wages and the prices of goods and services and threatened to halt the economic recovery. FDR enacted a Wage & Price Freeze to stop it, and also set up bureaucracies to approve wage increases and price increases for goods and services. This came to an head in 1942, as unions fought over whether or not to strike in order to force the National War Labor Board to grant wage increases.
To get around the Wage Freeze, employers began offering employees paid hospitalization plans through local hospitals
on an individual basis.
In 1949, the
In Re: Inland Steel Supreme Court decision paved the way for group plans via unions.
That effectively coerced all individual plans into group plans.
It is here and now that private insurers start getting involved in health insurance.
There's just one problem. Private insurers are offering insurance based on risk-analysis, while the American Hospital Association's Blue Cross is stuck using the Community Rating Scheme.
Because private insurers can offer cheaper insurance based on risk-analysis, private insurers start eating up and taking the Market Share away from the American Hospital Association's Blue Cross, who is now losing money hand over fist.
To spite the private insurers, and to spite Americans, the American Hospital Association then lobbies Congress to make changes to the IRS Tax Code in 1954 with this change....
"Premiums paid by an employer on policies of group life insurance without cash surrender value covering the lives of his employees, or on policies of group health or accident insurance...do not constitute salary if such premiums are deductible by the employer under Section 23(a) of the Code."
What does that do? It changes this...
....$6 for 21 Days of Hospitalization.
....to this...
....$6 for an Unspecified Number of Days of Hospitalization.
Since private insurers have been stripped of the ability to offer
bona fide insurance, they must increase their premiums to offset their future
unspecified losses.
Introduced by various House and Senate sponsors and subject to extensive hearings, the basic framework of part A began to reflect accommodations between the sponsors, the Administration and the American Hospital Association (AHA).
It ranged all the way from principles of institutional reimbursement, which has been pretty thoroughly already worked out in a general way for their own purposes between Blue Cross and the Hospital
Association over a period of several years
The American Hospital Association has already nominated the Blue Cross organization for its membership, although some member hospitals will undoubtedly elect out of this arrangement. We have proceeded very far in the development of working arrangements with Blue Cross, although no formal approval as a fiscal intermediary has yet been given them.
Source: Report to Social Security Administration Staff on the Implementation of the Social Security Amendments of 1965, Robert M. Ball Commissioner, November 15, 1965
Well, how about that.
Who wrote the ACA? Aside from H&HS and the IRS, the American Hospital Association. Granted, the American Hospital Association sold off Blue Cross years ago, but then they no longer needed it to achieve their goal of obtaining monopoly health care control in the US, and unfortunately, a lot of people on this forum are bending over backwards to help them, because they don't understand and they're blind to Reality.
Anyway, the ACA changes this...
....$6 for an Unspecified Number of Days of Hospitalization.
....to this...
....$6 for an Infinite Number of Days of Hospitalization.
I've been waiting for months now for even one brave courageous supporter of Obamacare to step up to the plate and explain how much Infinity costs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jojajn
Where was this outcry when the GOP killed the Public Option which would have provided a competitive alternative?
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The illegal National Government has no authority over health insurance.
I just explained to you the history of how your health care system came to be FUBAR. If you want affordable health care with access for all, then instead of enacting new laws on top of harmful damaging laws that interfere in the Market, try repealing, rescinding or revoking all of the harmful laws.
Historically...
Mircea
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