Filibuster. Really? (Page 2)

(crickets chirping in background...........)

Oh, but we CAN'T blame the Insurance companies.  They're just hard working, American capitalists taking advantage of a fair marketplace.    Noooooo.   It's that OBAMA's fault. 

And Prez BO nailed it the other day when he said, "When folks discover this thing (ACA) works, they'll probably stop calling it ObamaCare."  Truth Is....NOBOBY knows what this thing is going to look like in a year.  NOBODY!  NOOOOBOODY! 

edited to add quotation marks.

I do.  It's actually pretty easy because the laws of supply and demand are pretty well baked.  Medical care will be considerably more expensive due to massive new demand, insurance rates will go up to offset the higher rates of healthcare.  Everyone will still blame the evil insurance companies for gouging the consumers.

I've said it a few times before on here, but ACA will not fix the healthcare problems in the US because it has nothing to do with people not having insurance.  It has everything to do with too many people having insurance.

It may sound silly, but it's a simple economic issue that's been known about for decades.  When I went to college, we had a whole chapter in economics that talked about the impending healthcare disaster due to insurance.

back in the early 1900's there were doctors, hospitals, and patients.  When somebody got sick, they went to the doctor and paid their $50 or whatever to see the doctor.  For the most part there was no insurance premiums to pay and no insurance companies paying doctors.  Nobody cared because healthcare was affordable to the masses.

Then comes world war II and the government imposes a wage freeze on employers which forces employers to get creative to stay competitive with employees.  They start offering to give their employees medical insurance and or subsidize their medical insurance as extra compensation.  After the war, employees really liked this benefit so it kind of stuck around.  However, the byproduct of this benefit is that now employees health costs are less expensive.  I don't have to pay $50 to go to the doctor, I only have to pay $10.  So now when little sally gets the sniffles, I'll just go to the doctor.  This gradually drove the demand for healthcare up, and as we know with supply and demand when demand goes up the cost goes up to compensate until the demand goes back down.  It will always find an equilibrium.

Now fast forward several decades and employers and insurance companies come up with more and more clever plans to entice their employees we see things such as HMO's and PPO's and probably half a dozen other three letter acronym type programs that are all subsidized by the employer.  The other catch is even when the employee pays for a portion of that insurance it all comes out pre-tax on their paycheck.  It's just another fico/healthcare/ssi box on their paystub that they don't even think about.  So, even when there is individual expense it's not "felt" by the consumer.  So the demand side acts in an almost infinite demand capacity because the employee paid healthcare is virtually free to them.
As was before the supply side gets pinched harder and harder because of the near infinite demand so they keep raising their prices higher and higher.  However, if the patient has an HMO he doesn't care if the xray costs $500 or $50,000 because I only have to pay my $50 copay and the insurance eats the rest.
The insurance companies have to raise their rates again and again because of the increased costs they're being charged.  However, these rates rarely make it to the end user due to the phenomenon of the employer paying the premiums.  Yeah, their insurance might go up $20/mo. or their copay might go up $5 but that's not going to slow anybody down.

Now, you have the poor soul who doesn't have a job that provides insurance who tries to go to the doctor and they have to pay $350 out of pocket just to get a runny nose checked, or god forbid they have to go to an emergency room and get a $20,000 bill for a couple tests that were ran.  It's absolutely impossible for anyone to afford care outside of insurance now, because of the economic problem that people having insurance have caused.

Everyone likes to pile on the "greedy" insurance companies as the culprit, but they are not the problem at all.  In fact their margins have gotten smaller and smaller on a percentage basis over the years as they've tried to absorb as much as they could.  Obviously they're making big multi-billion dollar profits, but that's what multi-billion dollar company's do.  The last time I explained this I looked up the financials and profit of one of the large insurance companies.  I want to say it was Blue Cross, but I can't remember.  Either way, if you took 100% of their profit and spread it across their entire customer base it would have lowered rates something like a $1 or $2 per month (I forget the number).  Then the response was that the Exec's are all making billions of dollars, so I took the entire gross profit (prior to any company expenses/salary) and it worked out to dropping monthly rates $6 or $7 per month for every user.  So the moral of the story is their "gouging" is to the extent of $1 or $2 per month for each customer.

So, now you have President Obama who wants to fix a real problem which is unaffordable healthcare for people that don't have insurance.  His solution is to create a new government backed insurance program that provides subsidized insurance to "everyone"  It then imposes a bunch of new mandates that require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions and the likes.

If you thought demand for healthcare was high before, you wait until 100M new people jump on with "free" insurance.  The cost of healthcare will skyrocket and the insurance companies will have to raise their rates significantly or go out of business.

So, in an effort to "fix" the problem the administration has taken a fuel truck full of gasoline and poured it on the fire and it's going to get a lot worse.

btw, the fix is to shift to high deductible healthcare plans such as HSA's and disallow companies to pay/subsidize insurance premiums.  Allow any insurance company to compete in any state and mandate that everyone has to have a "policy".  Think car insurance model.  Car insurance isn't out of control is it?  No, because people have to pay a lot of money out of pocket to get things fixed and their insurance goes up $50/mo. when they make a claim.  So, people pay directly for repairs or do what they can to prevent making a claim.  However, when they do total somebodies car they have insurance to cover it.
This also gives the consumers choices so they don't have to use the over priced bloated plan their employer was suckered into buying.

Did you know the US is the only country that has employers that pay for and subsidize healthcare?

No sarc font needed.  They don't because it's a multi-day wait and they're all better by the time they get in.  God help them if they need to see a specialist.

And here you have it...

It's Cruz! Texas senator tops GOP presidential preference poll following epic Senate stand against Obamacare funding

'Ted Cruz this week established himself as the grassroots hero of the Republican Party,' Public Policy Polling president Dean Debnam said Friday. 'The party base has a lot more faith in him than their more official leaders.'

Cruz's star has been on the rise as he has seized the tea party mantle and worked to marginalize the Obamacare health insurance scheme with voters on the political right.

PPP said support for Cruz's presidential candidacy has jumped by 8 percentage points since July. He won the backing of 34 per cent of self-described 'very conservative' voters in the poll, twice what Rand Paul earned.

Combining that group with those who said they are 'somewhat conservative,' Cruz's lead opens up significantly. In the all-conservative category, he won support from 47 per cent.

It's not that i don't belive you.  It's just hard to believe that you weren't consulted on how 'easy' the whole Health Care thing is.  I'll stick with my original assessment...Lot's of "experts" have 'opinions', but I'm willing to wait a year, make some (likely) needed adjustments to the ACA and THEN decide if it's better than what we have now. 

Even with all that said, I do agree that the jury is out.  If they raise my taxes, but make my insurance cheaper then it's a net wash for me.

I was listening to the radio this morning and they were talking about a recent local survey that over 80% of people have no idea what to do or how to enroll in the ACA.  There's definitely going to be a lot of confusion.

Even for my business, we need to make a decision fairly soon as to what to do, but the small business plans on the exchange have been postponed in NE until November 15th.  So, I have to wait another 6 weeks to even compare our "replacement" plan to the ones available on the exchange.

I know that I'm not required to provide insurance, but I do provide insurance for my employees and I have absolutely no clue what's going to happen in the next few months.  That just sucks, no matter how good or bad this law is.

Here's a Post from one of my facebook friends from the other night,  She was just notified that her old plan wasn't compliant with the ACA and gave the side by side comparison of the new ACA compliant plan.

Thank you, Obamacare! Xxxx and I pay for our health insurance out of pocket since we are self employed. Starting in January 2014:

- Our premiums go up $182 per month (an increase of 67%)
- Our coinsurance changes from ZERO to 50% 
- Our single out of pocket limit increases from $2,500 (our deductible) to $6,350
- Our family out of pocket limit increases from $5,000 (our deductible) to $12,700
- We now have coverage for a bunch of stuff that we don't need

Because, you know, we weren't happy with our previous insurance. Oh wait - yes, yes we were happy with it. And we have $182 a month for premiums and $7700 a year for copays just lying around. Oh wait, no, we don't. I'm not bitter at all...oh wait, yes I am.

So, yes and no.  Most certainly the plan increases as described above will incent the individuals on that plan to not use healthcare, but it's so bad that they might as well not even have insurance at all and the rate goes up quite a bit over their previous insurance.  So, it's a balance.  People do need to have insurance that's viable so they can get some value out of it, but it also has to be something that they can use at least a little bit.

For example, I have to pay a $3k out of pocket deductible with our HSA where i pay 100% out of pocket.  Then once I hit that $3k it shifts to an 80/20 where the insurance pays 80% and I pay 20% until my total out of pocket hits $6k.  Then it shifts over to 100% coverage.  The idea is that for that first $3k I'm having to pay out of pocket so I don't go to the doc as often.

However, with the coverage described above from my friend, their initial deductible goes from $2500 to $6350.  So the first $6k is all out of pocket and then it only goes to 50/50 where they have to pay 50% out of pocket until their total out of pocket is $12,700.  Oh, and their premium went up by 67%

So, yes it will help with the supply problem by forcing them to not use the doctor as much, but it helps it so much that they shift from having a viable insurance plan to effectively having no insurance at 67% more the cost.