There is a big difference between lying and being mistaken. Perhaps President Obama should have looked into the plan more carefully and saw to it that it was as he claimed. I can’t read his mind or intention, and the same was in the case of the Iraq war starting on false information.
The President is just a human being and impossible to know every detail of things going on in government and depends on his cabinet to fill him in.
Not sure what you mean. It’s non an issue of whether it was “implied” or not, it was “said”. He said “no matter what”. We’re not reading that into his speeches. It was there, verbatim.
Sure, as long as none of those things happened because of Obamacare. I don’t think anyone is going to hold Obama responsible if they change jobs. But if their policy is changed, or if their new policy makes them go to a new doctor because of the ACA, or their new policy comes with a higher price tag, then they’re likely to be upset.
Obama’s “Period” at the end of his statements comes pretty close to “no matter what”. I think it’s a fair take on it.
What are you talking about? He says “no matter what”, it’s not inferred from “Period”, although it could be.
“That means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
Emphasis added.
Based on that chart, I withdraw my thesis. What I had heard on one of the Sunday talk shows seems to be incorrect.
:smack:I actually forgot he said that. I was giving Lobohan too much credit for having a point. And for that, I give myself a double :smack::smack:
Yes, you can meaningfully answer a question about how you yourself would feel about being “forced” to get a better policy. But weaseling is an answer in itself, though.
You seem surprised.
Now, guys, if we all agreed that “Yes, Obama misstated that one particular aspect of ACA”, would you in turn be willing to stipulate that “Yes, the Republicans and their sponsors and their media outlets lied like mother fucks about the whole thing and all of its parts and the motivations of its proponents too, and continue to lie while actively sabotaging it at every opportunity”? Would you consider yourselves to have “won” this thread if it meant acknowledging the context as well?
Nope. You need to tell me:
Without knowing those things, I can’t tell you if I want your so-called “better” policy or not.
Are you arguing that all insurance should not have these limits, or just health insurance? As far as I know, all other insurance has limits of some kind because otherwise the loss potential is…unlimited.
There is no sense in paying for coverage beyond what you are trying to insure. If you have no assets and nothing to protect, insurance isn’t really a great deal. The lower limit for liability insurance for cars is what, $100K? A 20 something year old person with little assets and no family hardly needs more coverage than that. But a person with many assets and things to protect would likely choose a higher coverage amount - and pay for it.
Well, if we agree that Obama lied, then what many on the Dem side repeatedly characterized as lies from the Rep side are now proven to NOT be lies. So agreeing to your terms seems ridiculous. Now if you’d like to start a thread that explores, in light of what we know now, which Rep statements were, in fact lies, that might be an interesting thread. But am I correct in assessing that you are willing to agree that Obama did lie. Repeatedly?
The problem is trying to shoehorn something that is not insurance into an insurance paradigm. You don’t buy insurance for things you know you are going to have to do. I don’t buy insurance for my weekly grocery shopping, nor should I buy insurance for my annual physical. Those are known expenses that can be planned for. We buy insurance for events that cannot be planned for-- accidents.
I find it scary to think that we all suddenly have no lifetime caps on medical payments, and that this is going to be able to be paid for out of small tweaks to HC premiums. At some point, we’re all going to be dying of old age, and sucking out HC $$ without end. If I have not cap, and I don’t mind being kept alive by any means, then the sky’s the limit. No?
Not exactly. We’re all going to die (‘there can be only one’ excepted). That being said, the cost of such treatment will be high. It’s unrealistic to think that such herculean efforts will not cost the participant pool in general much more than it does now.
The claim from way back when was that to balance against these changes, either premiums have to rise, services have to be curtailed, or there needs to be significant innovation or efficiency achieved. I think at least one, maybe two of the above will happen.
Premiums rise? We were promised Obamacare would save us money
Services curtailed? Will there be a “panel” set up for that?
Innovation? Perhaps, but that’s not something we can plan for
Efficiency? Ah, savings from cutting waste. Every politician claims he can do that, but it seldom actually occurs.
I’m not saying you’re advocating those things, just pointing out why I’m not so sanguine about our prospects going forward. We shall see!!
Logic does *not *work that way. Just for an example, would you consider it proven that ACA establishes death panels? 
But then, I’m addressing a guy who wants to delay it a year to find out how it really works, aren’t I?
I mainly want to see if you’re interested in actually exploring a subject about which you have expressed belligerent ignorance more than once in the past, or in simply scoring a point of some kind. As in, establishing the purpose and value of this thread.
John, you’ve already answered the question clearly enough, thank you.
Agreed. My mom still calls health insurance “hospitalization.” Which is what it used to be. We all pool our money in case some bad stuff happens and we need to go to the hospital. Not everyone needs to go to the hospital just like not everyone’s house burns down, so the insurance model worked.
When we try to put doctor’s visits, preventative check ups, and yearly mammogram or prostate exams into an insurance model, it must either fail or create perverse incentives. Insurance deals with pooled risk of an unfortunate event happening. All of our homes MAY burn down, but not all do.
In my kingdom, any policy would do two separate things: 1) it would make health insurance truly insurance against unknown risks and leave regular stuff like doctor visits to market forces (with traditional welfare/charity to those unable to pay) and 2) completely divorce health insurance from employment. I know there is no data on this, but how many successful businesses could have been/be started but never got off of the ground because the would be entrepreneur simply couldn’t replace the group health insurance provided by his current employer?
How is encouraging preventive checkups and those other things a *perverse *incentive, not a smart and efficient one that reduces overall costs to the system, not to mention that it keeps more people healthy?
That’s putting the best available treatment for any condition, prevention, up to the unreliable whims of those with the means and the charitable impulses who are available at the moment. Who benefits by removing that safety net?
On *that *you’ll find little disagreement, none of it very thoughtful. It’s a central reason why pretty much the entire rest of the civilized world has implemented the single-payer system or something close to it, and why we need to as well.
If certain preventive measures lower cost, then it make sense for insurance companies to offer incentives to utilize those measures. And in the case of communicable diseases, it can make sense for the government to require immunizations. But I’m not ready for the government to require that I sign up for a broad range of preventive measures, especially since it’s unclear whether they really reduce costs or not.
The perverse incentive is for doctors to overstate the need for tests since the government is requiring insurance companies to pay for them. It’s not “insurance” if it’s a known entity. My car insurance doesn’t cover tune-ups. Does yours?
Also, as noted, the cost savings of preventive care can be overstated. It’s taken as an axiom by many, and it would seem to make sense, but I don’t think we have a definitive answer.
Isn’t that just those doctors being unethical then? Ordering unnecessary tests just to get paid for them? How is this a failing of the concept of covering preventative care? Isn’t this a failing of these individual unethical doctors? Can’t they be dealt with the normal way medical ethics cases are dealt with? Why do we need wholesale changes to the concept of insurance because some doctors are unethical? Why aren’t they personally responsible for their failures of ethics?
I can live without my car if I have to, or get a new one if I need it for transportation. So if I refuse to tune up my car regularly, and it breaks down, I have recourse. I can just go to the dealership. Can you live without your body? Can you get a new one if you refuse to get it ‘tuned up’ regularly and you develop some debilitating disease that could have been cured if caught earlier? A car is a thing, your body is you, you cannot differentiate yourself from your body. That’s one of the major reasons that this analogy fails when applied this way.
That’s true, but a lot of people won’t.
The people aggrieved over this are not just the ones who didn’t know better and could have. It’s people who feel that the law should never have been passed and might not have been passed had it been promoted more honestly.
To return to the Bush/Iraq comparison for a very limited comparison, it’s not like the only people upset about Bush’s alleged lies are those who were fooled. It includes a lot of people who never bought it to begin with and are upset that Bush was successful at getting the US into the war based on his “lies”.
Hospitals are required to treat ER patients for free if necessary. It’s a choice of Medicare/Medicaid or nothing, for them.
There are also other incentives/penalties involved.