I don’t know what the actual numbers “should” be. Insurance companies usually use a 5:1 ratio so they must be on to something. The point is when you put a cap on the extra premium paid by the older people you are necessarily shifting the burden onto the young.
How’s about trying to have a conversation instead of hysterically jumping to conclusions. “So you think I should just DIE!!!” is not very convincing and, quite frankly, you should be embarrassed.
Your post seems to be leaking sarcasm all over the place, but I do have a question about the bolded sentence: do you think we are all in this together or not? “This”= our country, it’s laws and the society we have, btw.
ETA: It’s a simple yes or no question, so a simple yes or no answer will do.
Understood. I am not complaining, just explaining that I have been subsidizing someone for years - as I should. The other options are repugnant - be a non-paying leech or get seriously ill.
Insurance is fine and works well for say, house fires - if nly 20% of houses burn.
For health, where perhaps 80% or more of people need health care, not so much.
It’s not a simple yes or no question, because the terms “in this together” are too vague.
I would make sacrifices for my wife, because we’re in this (marriage) together, that I wouldn’t make for my business partner, even though we’re in this (business) together. And i would make sacrifices for my business partner that I wouldn’t make for a guy in Roanoke, even though we’re in this (state) together.
So: yes, I believe we’re all in this country together, in the sense that we are all physically located within the country.
No, in that I don’t believe that implies a clear set of obligations that are universally accepted by everyone as owed to everyone.
We as a society could afford a manned mission to Mars, if we had to collective will to accomplish it and were willing to NOT spend on other things.
It’s insufficient to simply say what society can and cannot afford. The question needs to balance the costs of healthcare against the other costs that society is ALSO assuming for itself.
And the question needs to be settled if healthcare should in fact be a cost that society bears jointly for all its members. Where is that written? (Apart, I acknowledge, from Public Law 111-148). Many other desirable emollients remain in the private person’s hands. We don’t say that society owes you a college degree, for example: if you want one, you must pay for it. We don’t say society owes you a spouse: if you want one, you must persuade someone to marry you. We don’t owe you Internet access, gym membership, massages, movie viewings, real property, or shoes.
You feel healthcare should be on the the list of things we DO owe you, just by virtue of your being born.
Why?
And if we do, what scheme is acceptable to ration it?
I ALWAYS carried health insurance when I was young and healthy. Sometimes it was paid by my employer but during a lot of that time I was self-employed and purchased private insurance. And it wasn’t cheap. In fact it usually ran me about $500 a month which seems comparable to a lot of the plans available today.
Even though I was healthy I know stuff happens and I was concerned about not only my own finances but those of my parents. I knew if I had a bad accident or got a serious illness my parents would feel compelled to pick up the slack and I didn’t want to cause them financial hardship or bankruptcy.
That would be “no”, then. Not sure why it took you so many words to just say “no”.
What I love best here is how you set yourself up as the “have” and Dr. Drake as the “have not”.
It’s a really nifty, subtle attempt to poison the discussion but it’s also transparent as hell and really repugnant. OTOH, it does confirm that as far you are concerned, no, we aren’t all in this together; instead you see the world as “me vs. everyone else”. It underscores what you wrote previously, about how you aren’t willing to “sacrifice” things unless you get something out of it (and it doesn’t really put you out, as well). It’s a really shitty attitude, IMO.
Why can’t an insurance company take the wad of funds and invest it so that they make money even if they’re paying out roughly what they’re taking in?
Because it is a lot more complicated than your kindergarten question might indicate. If we are “all in this together” at every level then why do you have an internet connection. Use that money to feed the homeless! Drive a car? Sell it so some guy in Detroit can pay his mortgage. Stop with the grade-school platitudes.
And if they lose it? Seriously, there’s probably a law against it.
Some health insurance policies will not pay for injuries inflicted in skydiving and several other extreme activities, as well as those from the commission of a crime. Life insurance often won’t pay if you die doing those things, either.
Does anyone know if the ACA changed that?
So, some conservative with a large-ish number of followers tweeted this link. Is that someone who posts here, or did they just Google FreedomWorks, or what? I’m curious. (As to how I know, they seemed to figure out, or at least correctly guess, that my Twitter handle is the same as my name here.)
Ha, you’ve got a point there. And I was like that once myself!
Okay, this is a pretty compelling argument for why young people should still sign up. But it doesn’t answer the question of why Democrats didn’t provide a better deal for their most loyal age group, which kicks back something to their base at the same time as it makes it unnecessary to cajole them into signing up and hold our collective breaths hoping they do.
It’s a cute image, but I suspect it wouldn’t really work in practice. If you discovered you had cancer, or needed some kind of surgery, I think the whole community rating and ban on denying coverage for preexisting conditions might make this work. But I am pretty sure that if you are in an accident and get rushed to the ER, you are going to end up with a huge medical bill and will not be able to get insurance to cover it.
I infer that you feel it should NOT be on that list. Is that right? What DO you feel should be on the list? Disaster relief? Fire department protection of your house?
And should people be required to carry liability insurance in order to drive? What about building safety? Should I be able to feel that if I rent an apartment, some governmental authority has been tasked over time with making sure it is a safe place to live? Or should it be caveat emptor?
I’m 49 years old, with no pre-existing conditions, and pay $157 a month for a policy with a $3,500 deductible. It does cover annual screenings (Pap smear and mammogram for me) and 3 doctor’s visits a year covered under the copay; any more will be applied to the deductible. So far, I have no complaints.
It exists, in all its forms, so people can pay bills they wouldn’t be able to cover on their own, and spreads the risk over multiple people or entities.
Why = because the alternative results in real and preventable human suffering. Because as individuals we do not have the option of refusing to be born (though I guess there’s always suicide).
As far as rationing it, that is a much more complex question. I would say that access to preventative care and information (including physicals) should be completely unrationed barring reasonable logistical constraints. Given that people will, in fact, die no matter what, some of the extraordinary measures designed to delay that which do not result in any real extension of quality life should probably be rationed, but I am neither a physician nor an ethicist and I think that should be a profound and sustained conversation before I chime in.
I do take your point that there’s a difference between a spouse and some guy in Roanoke, but that’s not really a response to my point. You and I just disagree on how much our minimal commitment to our fellow Americans is. (And since I’m an American abroad and not affected by Obamacare, your commitment to me is pretty much zero, anyway.)
You’re attempt to bring in issues other than health care is laughable. The issue under discussion is health care.
What’s laughable, other than your grade-school platitudes, is your ignorance of your own question:
“Your post seems to be leaking sarcasm all over the place, but I do have a question about the bolded sentence: do you think we are all in this together or not? “This”= our country, it’s laws and the society we have, btw.”
Our country? Our laws? The society we have? Yup…all sounds healthcare related the me :rolleyes:
That’s reasonable. I have no idea of what the ratio should be - setting it anywhere shifts the burden one way or another.
The fundamental disagreement in this debate is whether access to decent health care is a right or a privilege purchased with money. If we all agreed it was a right, we could discuss the best way to pay for it and the best way of making the provision of health care more efficient. Which might wind up as a single payer plan.
Those who don’t think it is a right are going to feel ripped off by paying for "those people"s care. In much of the country “those people” are the working poor without access to insurance and with too much money for Medicaid. The refusal of some Republican States to be involved with he ACA Medicaid program shows that they don’t really even want to pay for the very poorest.
I don’t know for sure that you are on the privilege side but it sounded that way. If you are not I apologize. But people die and people do go bankrupt thanks to the current system. I personalized it because it is personal. I’m old enough so that getting another job quickly is going to be tricky, and I do have a pre-existing condition which could kill me if not treated, If I do get laid off, when Cobra runs out I’m screwed until Medicare kicks in. After ACA starts, I’m protected. So this is not a theoretical issue.
To be fair, the evidence does not show that. The original Medicaid program was (and is, thanks to the Obamacare SCOTUS ruling) optional for states to join. Barry Goldwater’s Arizona was, fittingly, the last to sign on in the '80s. All fifty states currently participate in “classic” Medicaid. So those Republican states will continue to pay for the “very poorest”. The Obamacare Medicaid expansion is for the people at the next tier, who have too much money to qualify for traditional Medicaid. It is that program that many red states are refusing to participate in.