ACA Individual Mandate Struck Down! (Page 4)

When the representatives use the same plan then talk to me about fair.  They decide a plan for us, in turn we must buy it, as we are taxed or penalized on it, in the mean tme they ride a different policy?

I'm revolting, someday!

We cannot legislate behavior on diet or exercise or taking advantage of health care that is provided.  We cannot even seem to legislate (much) on clear health hazards like smoking.   Insofar as your diet, exercise, smoking, or getting good preventative care are under your own control, good health that results is its own reward.  Bad health is its own punishment.  That is not the issue.  The truth is that the insurance system that we had did not work.  There were citizens who were shut out of affordable health care. Pre-existing conditions prevented people from getting health insurance. Costs to the uninsured were orders of magnitude higher than to the insured at the emergency room.   ACA changes that fundamentally.  What people now do with a fairer system is their business.  It is the business of government to make sure the rules of the game are fair to all citizens.  That is what we are working toward.  The ACA s a huge step toward fairness in health insurance. 

TW

Everything I have read states that it forces the insurances companies to not exclude people, not limit what is covered, AND not set unrealistic rates on coverage.  So, the new policy isn't allowed to be ridiculously unaffordable...at least from whatever I have read.

So all it is then is a way to make someone else pay for one's care, correct?

There is some argument as to if there is a limit or not (I've never found anything that specifically states a limit but I could be wrong). 

Regardless, even if there is one, how do you think the insurance companies will compensate for that limit?  By spreading the extra out to everyone else.

You cannot force an insurance company to cover a person who has horrible health and not expect them to somehow make back the money.  If there is one thing insurance companies do well it's make a profit.

If you take a step back, the reason companies don't cover pre-existing conditions (right or wrong) is because in the long run it costs them a lot of money.  If somebody's had cancer twice and they cover them for $300/mo. there's a high probability they're going to lose a lot of money on that individual in the long run.  So if the same insurance company is now going to be forced to cover that person it is going to cost them more money and that has to come from somewhere.  So, if they cannot charge the individual a high premium then they'll raise everyone else's premiums to compensate for it.

Then we will see a lot more headlines like this:  ObamaCare on Campus: Schools Raise Premiums Sharply, Drop Coverage

For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction in economics too.

You need to read the law.  There are no taxes enacted with this law. The Chief Justice characterized the penalty for not purchasing private health insurance as a tax, but the revenue hopefully from this will be nil.  It was not envisioned by the framers of the law as a source of funding, just an incentive to get everyone to purchase insurance. The Congressional Budget Office predicts a net decrease in expenditure from the ACA. There is a new cost for insurance subsidies to those who cannot afford the insurance and an offsetting reduction in Medicaid expenses.

Really? so the taxes on medical devices that are supposed to get repeealed are not a tax then?  Really?  That is just one of the new taxes and you can split whatever hairs you want but companies don't pay taxes we pay them in the form of higher prices.  I am sorry but again it is tortured logic to say it is a penalty and not a tax.  The revenue will not be nill because most healthy people will figure out that it costs less to pay the tax and drop their HC coverage because they are guaranteed to have it when they need it.  This will lead to a premium spiral that will lead to more people dropping out until they need it.

The CBCs score is bogus and even they know it.  It takes into account things that will never happen.  Including cutting payments to doctors that are already not even covering costs.  Or the whole Elder care part of the packeage that went down in flames.  The revenue from it was supposed to defray the costs of OC.

I know how it was sold but a fairy tale is a fairy tale even when the Government tells it.

little bit of a segway, but I just had a dumb thought.  Does anybody know how much the actual premium is going to be for Obamacare?  I tried googling it and everything I found just pointed to how much my individual taxes will go up from Obamacare.  I'm curious how much the actual premium is?  The thing I will get fined for if I don't sign up and pay for it. (or have employee provided insurance)

I did find somewhere that said the penalty for not having it would be 2.5% of my income, so my guess is the premium would be close to or lower than that.

I'm sure its based on income with all low income voters not having to pay any premiums.

Starts at $95 and goes up to 1% of your income depending on your tax bracket.

So how is it that every other industrialized western country can afford to cover its citizens while spending less per capita on health care than we do? 

I think the more likely "reaction" would be less redundancy in some areas and more rational providing of services. 

do any of these countries have mandated private health insurance exchanges though?  i could be COMPLETELY WRONG but aren't they mostly on single payer (gov't) systems?  that is a huge difference...

I'm not sure they can, Greece, Spain, Italy...

Misspellings of homonyms are a pet peeve of mine.

This is a segway:

I believe the word you are trying to us is "segue" - as in a smooth transition from one topic to another. 

Now your just being pedantic.    

fixed

lol, hey i learned something today.  

OK, what about Germany, Brazil, England, Canada, France, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, Luxemberg, New Zealand...?

I don't know a lot about their systems but I think its because they have a top down control of their healthcare system which makes it cheaper and I'll argue their level of care is nowhere near what you can get in the US.  Where do the wealthy in Canada go for big surgeries?  The US.  
We in the US do have out of control costs in healthcare (you and I probably agree on that), but what we've done IMHO with Obamacare is jam a government system on top of our "expensive" health care system wich has many layers of profit and liability insurance still in it.  Something has to give.  Either the liability expense has to go down (not likely), the doctors/hospitals will have to make less (not likely) the care has to go down (very likely) or the tax payers will have to pay a lot more than they were expecting (almost guaranteed)

I was mainly responding to the bold part above. I think the further the consumer is removed from the cost the less control there is. This is a very complex and expensive problem that I wish I had the answer to. I'm kind of leaning toward a single payer program.

On a somewhat related tangent. We opted to drop our insurance coverage last year after multiple years of 20% - 30% increases. If we need to go to the Doctor we pay for it (and get a discount) over the billed rate. So in a since I am part of the problem.

What's with the dread-locked youngster riding sideways on the Segway?  Is he trying to segway-jack?

I'm a little more concerned with what the guy behind him is doing.  

Whoa where'd you come up with that?

I'd agree if the individual mandate had been struck down and the rest of the law remained.  Or if you were talking about the health care system *prior* to the ACA.

Your analogy is totally off base when everyone is paying into the system.

The key goal of the individual mandate was to get people paying at a younger age.  Otherwise your stereotypical 20-something working tables just went uninsured for many years since he has no need for the doctor.  Then later on, age 40, 50, 60 whatever, he starts paying for insurance but using the system often enough that he's coming out ahead, so to speak.

If we're all sharing the burden early on, then it's not a problem to take advantage of expensive procedures when something catastrophic happens.