Yeah…the horror!
They have to provide you a safe workplace too (among other things) that cost them money!
Evil government!
Fair enough.
The reason the tax-penalty can be lower then the cost of Health Insurance and the CBO still predicts most (though not all) people will buy in is because insurance offers more protection then just covering pre-existing conditions. More or less what Wack-aMole says, not every type of medical accident can be waited on for treatment. Also I think there’s a forced lag time between when you buy insurance and when they have to start paying for your pre-existing problems, so if your uninsured your going to have to spring for at least the first couple treatments yourself.
Some people will still choose to risk going without, but that will still be risky, albeit less so then it used to be. And now it comes with an added tax penalty.
Also the lower income brackets will receive gov’t subsidies to buy insurance, so while the penalty may be less then the total cost of their health insurance, they will have to pay the full penalty but only part of the cost of Health Insurance.
No, the BIG difference is that now they can afford to not take that chance.
This was Obama’s argument during the primary (when he was against the individual mandate). People want to be insured. They go to great lengths to avoid being uninsured. If they can afford insurance, they will buy it. People, in general, don’t fuck around when it comes to their own health or the health of their children. Some do, but it isn’t a large number.
The insurance companies didn’t buy this, and in order to get everybody on board the individual mandate was added.
What effect this will have remains to be seen, but to me the subsidies, employer mandate, and insurance regulations will have a larger impact.
Agreed for all, emergency medical situations but I already agreed to that. Is your thought process that this will be the majority of situations or are you just asking if I’d want to take that chance?
I think that is a very slim minority and the fact that people go uninsured now for catastrophic injury (even those who CAN afford) illustrates my point.
You cannot be turned down for insurance, pre-existing covers a lot of ground. Sam Stone alluded to the fact that this bill would have far reaching and sometimes drastic after effects.
I believe this to be one of them. The financing will fail, then what?
I’m not following why you think that this particular issue (the individual mandate and associated penalties) will cause the financing to fail. The way I understand it the tax penalties are a very small part of the revenue generated by this bill (excise taxes and Medicare cuts are much larger portions).
The main folks that choose to take the individual tax penalty rather than buy a plan from the exchange will be 1) young, 2) healthy, and 3) either unemployed, but not poor enough to qualify for large subsidies, or work for an employer that chooses to take the empoyer penalty.
Seems likely that the subset of those that don’t generate enough revenue (through the individual tax and/or the company tax) to cover any increase in the risk pool will be extremely small. Why do you disagree?
I’ll hold my breath on the Medicare Ad cuts, really. I don’t think that pool will be small at all. IN other threads there were 40 million uninsured folks, some 30 million of them made over 50k a yr. Is that the “poor”?
Money coming in less than money going out is not going to balance neatly regardless of what the CBO says.
Maybe I am overstating and there is plenty of money in the excise tax to cover 20-30 million people that weren’t covered before…And we can hope that the cuts to the Medicare Advantage plans are made. If the tax breaks and the tax mandate are indeed very small portions of the total then maybe it isn’t an issue at all.
This is clearly incorrect for several reasons. First of all, health insurance offers value to the insured while a tax penalty offers none. They’re covered in the case of a catastrophic event like an emergency appendectomy or a broken limb. People seem to be confusing the idea that they can’t be rejected for pre-existing conditions with a requirement that insurance policies be written and effective instantaneously. If you break your arm skiing Friday night it’d take the better part of a week to get insured. So if the idea is seriously that people will tough it out until they get insured when they have a medical emergency to avoid tens of thousands of dollars in bills, well that’s just insane and I don`t know what else to say about it.
Of course, if the choice is between paying $1000 in tax and $5000 to obtain health insurance, it may be better to pay the tax. However, it’s not correct to say it would be unwise to purchase insurance if it’s even a little more expensive than the fine. If insurance is $2000 and the fine is $1500, it’s very likely that the extra $500 to be insured is the wise decision.
Second, all this ignores routine medical costs and preventative care. Some people may be so young and healthy that they go an entire year not seeing a doctor, taking a prescription drug, or anything else. But lots of people, especially women, do see their doctor for regular checkups or take prescription drugs for whatever reason or do non-catastrophic non-emergency procedures. All those costs can add up and they’d be less with insurance. So that gap between the tax and the insurance premium can be even larger before buying it becomes unwise once you take into account all expected costs.
The people who can afford coverage today but refuse to get it will still not get coverage under the new system. The tax penalty is no incentive to get insurance. I could easily offset that tax by increasing the amount I put in an IRA or making a few more charitable contributions.
I think a lot of people will find an incentive to leave their insurance and only pay the penalty. Many people are perfectly fine paying out of pocket for the little health care they need and jumping into an insurance policy after things start falling apart.
Those without coverage will end up in emergency rooms just like now. Hospitals will be forced to treat them just like now. Premiums will increase to pay for the freeloaders just like now, or either the hospitals or insurance companies will eventually go out of business.
I answered your question (more penalties means more government revenue, not less) and explained how it really means the exact opposite of the conclusion you drew the the OP, and yet my response is ignored.
Sniff.
Sorry Ravenman, I didn’t ignore you on purpose. A short answer to your statement about ‘free’ tax revenue is: It might be valid but we have no way of knowing how much extra costs the government is going to incur to get that $1000/yr from the tax payer. How many people currently not covered are you likely not going to get a penny from? Likewise, I have no way of knowing if the added costs are going to outweigh the potential benefit the tax incentive will do. It is my belief though that the incentive to go out and buy insurance isn’t so great.
Fuzzy, clearly if the margin is that small people would be better suited to take the insurance. I don’t think that case size is very large though.
Again, most of these questions really have to shake out a year or so down the line as we watch the costs of healthcare and the prospective governmental interventions.
Question: Is the tax penalty an accrual of a monthly premium or does it count if you buy insurance in say December of that year?
If only Congress had access to professional advice about budgetary matters, instead of just passing bills and praying it all works out! :rolleyes:
I hate to be snarky here, but have you ever thought of reading the report (warning: PDF file) by the Congressional Budget Office on this law?
The government isn’t going to be caught flat footed by this clever point you’ve made. They’ve already taken into account that a certain number of people (about 15 million citizens) aren’t going to sign up for it when they did their calculations.
The real problem raised in the OP’s scenario is not that the government will lose money, but that the insurance industry will collapse. If Bob is a single man earning $50,000 a year, he would have to pay a $1,250 fine for not buying insurance. Health insurance would cost more than that. However, because insurers are now required to take people on even when they’re sick, Bob might think, “instead of spending $3,000 on insurance, I can pay the $1,250 fine every year and just buy a comprehensive plan as soon as I get sick, and they’ll have to pay for my treatment”. The danger is if a lot of people do that health insurance companies end up paying for treatment for loads of sick people, but not getting enough premiums from healthy people to cover it, and they’d go bankrupt. It’s called the insurance death spiral.
And I have to say, I’m not sure what the answer is to the question, “why wouldn’t Bob just pay the fine?”. The CBO factored this problem into their estimations, and they concluded that about 3-4 million people would take this option, which wouldn’t damage the system too much. And if it starts to really damage the system, Congress could raise the fine. But while the CBO is widely respected and pretty trustworthy, I haven’t found out why they don’t think more people would do this.
The CBO also scores what it is given. If Congress estimates that 15 million people will not sign up for the plan then this is what the CBO scores. Congress can input all kinds of things to make sure the bill will not be expensive…such as cuts to Medicare and not implementing the doc fix. We all know these things are BS but what other BS information was the CBO given?
I’m pretty sure you have that wrong. Congress doesn’t give estimates as to how many people will sign up, the CBO comes up with that.
There is a Republican talking-point about how the bill has some shady price tricks, but I haven’t heard an intelligent description about what that is. Mostly it’s some douchebag whining about ten years of taxing for six years of service (stupidly ignoring the idea that at the end of ten years it still lowers the deficit), and whining about how other Medicare costs should be added in this bill.
You can be snarky all you want, as long as you refute my point (which you didn’t do)
Okay, I’ll do it.
Off the top of my head:
[ul]
[li]Someone who has a sudden life-threatening medical condition can still be put hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt before they have a chance to get insurance.[/li][li]Some people will want preventative medical care.[/li][li]Women need regular gynecological exams.[/li][li]Some people will get insurance from work.[/li][li]Some people aren’t douchebags that want to game the system.[/li][/ul]
The people paying the government extra taxes for not getting healthcare are paying into the system, but getting nothing in return. A good deal for the government.
The CBO factored this into their estimate.
So by your stellar interpretation skills, these are not the droids we are looking for?
Why would people be “douchebags” for playing by the rules given them?
All of your other points are currently in place now. How many people did the CBO factor into their calculations? And please answer why they think it is that many and not more, or less.
The immediate life threatening happenings I agree with. What about the non-immediate life threatening ones? Cancer to name but a one.
This one is where my question arose. What about the people the government is paying for and how do they equate? Also, how much are the administrative costs of this budget?
A douchebag is someone who wants to game the system, as I said. Most people just want insurance so they can go to the doctor. Uninsured guy will end up waiting in the emergency room while he has a fever with a bunch of illegal aliens. Most people aren’t going to do that, plus risk the other points above to save a few hundred dollars. Most guys I know who make 50k, don’t go shopping at the Salvation Army.
Yeah, so? In order to get preventative medical care it helps to have insurance. In order to get gynecological care it helps to have insurance. X amount of people will get insurance from work for less than the penalty. These are all reasons to not take the penalty.
My guess is they used whatever methods economists use to forecast such things. They aren’t casting chicken bones here. I see no reason to question their assessment and assume your intuition is more precise.
You’d still be on the hook for the doctor’s appointments and all the testing before your insurance comes in.
Most people want to have insurance, so they have things ready to go. Most people don’t wait to buy a suit until the morning they have to give a speech.
I guess I should stop posting as you continue to say the same things over and over in the hopes that they are correct.
As is said way upthread, we should just wait and see what shakes out.