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Except that the ACA required the Medical Loss Ratio / 80/20 Rule: Insurance companies have to spend at least 80% (85% in large group markets) of premium dollars on claims and activities to improve health care quality. That means that they can't earn high profits and give more than 15% of the money to the CEO or shareholders or spend it on advertising.
Nobody owes you help to insure against your stored up assets.
If you don't want to lose savings, then that's just tough. Your savings are there for rainy days, not just fun things. If you should lose it to ill health, then we're happy to cover you with Medicaid after you're depleted.
Translated: You buy health insurance because want to spend the rest of your savings on cool stuff--then you pay for that insurance yourself.
It's your insurance that's allowing providers to jack up their bills.
May as well just stream line the process and go single payer since many head there eventually.
You do not understand economics. It is not 20% profit. The 80% does not cover the cost of administering insurance, salaries, benefits, etc, for hundreds of thousands working at AETNA, UHC, etc. In the average corp, in any industry, SG&A (Selling, General Admin) costs 10% of revenue.
You still don't get it: You spend your savings first; it's for rainy days as well as sunshine.
We'll provide the safety net after that.
Amen. Single payer will never happen, Thank God. Not much will happen as it takes 60 Senate votes, plus a House majority, a threshold neither party will have ever again, in our lifetimes.
You want to give it over to the for profit companies? Have people forgotten how bad insurance policies were pre-ACA?
.
Most were quite satisfied with their coverage, just as I am.
Of course, medical stuff costs more. Almost 50 years ago, my dad died from a heart attack that today he'd walk away from within days but that is due to amazing technological breakthroughs that cost billions in Research & Development. Your local doctor's office has more invested in machines than the hospital I was born in had. All breakthroughs, but yes, if we want to walk away from what killed the greatest generation, we have to pay for it. Consuelo and Dr. Welby are no longer simply saying "I hope you feel better" and giving us aspirin, while we die. Now they have amazing tools to let us walk away, but it isn't free, nor should it be.
Federal law long before 2014 precluded employers from disallowing employees with pre-existing conditions.
On the thread, the rate increase is only affecting those who do not get subsidies -- those who are below 400% of the poverty line.
Moreover, the rates are rising because insurance companies overestimated the number of young and healthy people who would sign up for insurance -- basically, people who are rolling the dice that they won't get sick. Those people choose to pay the fine instead.
Congress could have addressed this years ago by increasing the fine, to give a greater incentive to buy the insurance.
Absolutely, positively Wrong. Prior law only made it illegal for employer plans to exclude PEC only past the first year of coverage. I myself even worked for a company, a very large one in fact, that pre-existing applied for the first full year back in 2012 and 2013. I had to fight tooth and nail to get Them to pay my claims because I have PEC myself.
You do not understand economics. It is not 20% profit. The 80% does not cover the cost of administering insurance, salaries, benefits, etc, for hundreds of thousands working at AETNA, UHC, etc. In the average corp, in any industry, SG&A (Selling, General Admin) costs 10% of revenue.
Insurance is not exactly the average corporation. They literally shuffle paperwork, and money. My wife just had a major surgery and it was 17K to our insurance company. Or 3.4K in profit. Call it 3K after paying people to shuffle paperwork. Keep in mind-most of the work is done by the biller.
BTW-Think of it this way, insurance companies are in a odd spot, if they pay out more, they make more-so they have a built in desire to make healthcare MORE expensive. BUT..they want to charge less then their competitors....or own the competition OR hospital locally. Either one is a win-win.
Theres some perverse advantages companies can take if they own local hospitals, or have little competition. Or can collude.
In the end.....I place a lot of the blame for these issues being unfixable upon the Republicans. The refusal to pass ANY fixes to it are causing this. Now? we're going to muddle on, and healthcare will become more unaffordable, with more and more dying due to lack of it. The situation will get worse and worse until we elect someone with the guts to pass universal healthcare-destroying the insurance company cartels. EVERYONE will freak out. It will all suck.
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