Cry me a river. Most people in the US get their health insurance subsidized by the government in one form another. But moochers, of course, happily suck at the government teat for free, but throw a tantrum when women get health care.
Are you sure you really want to compare health insurance to car insurance? coughindividual mandatecough*
Do you honestly believe, even for a second, that the ACA is a law that was designed to forbid the use of actuarial science?
If not, then what is the purpose of this kind of intentionally dishonest and obtuse hyperbole?
And I don’t think it’s particularly fair that I pay more for auto insurance just because I have a prostate and testicles. But we allow that. Shrug.
But I accept the science. Men incur 3 to 4 times as many DUI’s as women. Speeding by men is more likely to be a contributing factor in fatal accidents than speeding by women. Men are less likely to wear seat belts.
No reason we couldn’t make a policy decision and mandate that auto insurers eliminate gender as a consideration in setting risk pools. It’s a public policy decision. They did so in Europe.
If 7,041,000 people signed up, does that alter your definition of success? Or your level of snark?
The ACA very obviously does so. Are you denying that it forbids insurance companies from offering separate rates based on gender for the same individual plan?
Does it? Huh, you should dump that junk and go single - payer.
And it also forbids charging different rates because of pre-existing conditions, or prior insurance status in addition to gender. So, what? That’s the design of the plan. That doesn’t mean that actuarial science isn’t used to determine everything about the ACA, from the amount of government outlays, to exchange estimates, to pricing.
I’m saying, first of all, it would have been nice if the President and Congress told us the truth about what would happen prior to passing the legislation.
Second, it would seem we had a system, five years ago, where many people were happy with the health insurance they have, but good options were not available to everyone. In that case, why couldn’t the Democrats instead have pushed for a narrowly tailored law to provide coverage to the poor, those with pre-existing conditions, and forth, while leaving alone those who were happy with their insurance? Why did they, instead, need to go for a massive government program that would have control of all health insurance sold in the country?
As for your claim of what “every civilized country on the face of the earth” does with health care, there’s a lot to debate there. Does every country offer universal health care? All the wealthy ones do at least. The US has done so for years in the form of letting everyone use an emergency room whenever they want. Perhaps that’s a stupid way to offer universal health care, but we did do it.
Does every country control costs with a public authority, dump everyone into a common risk pool, etc… Far from it. There’s a varying private sector role from country to country. Countries such as Canada with the smallest roles for the private sector in health insurance, certainly don’t have the best health care systems. Some people would probably be surprised to learn that countries like Sweden and France do have markets for private health insurance.
The final drafts as well as the CBO reports scoring of the legislation were available for anyone to read.
Government has been massively involved in the health insurance market for decades now. Our government spending per-person is the highest in the world, even higher than countries with universal health care. The health insurance industry has long been one of the more heavily regulated industries in the country. The Democrats didn’t push for a narrowly tailored law because the ACA is supposed to bend the cost-curve in government spending.
In addition to all of that, if you want to provide a basic level of coverage to everyone, you have to mandate coverage requirements. That’s one of the goals of the law.
And the ACA is a less stupid way to do it.
Um, what? The ACA is designed to allow private insurance companies to operate. And the ACA has a far larger private sector involvement than either Sweden and France. According to your own article, about 1/2% of Swedes have private health insurance. If you are going to hold up countries with much smaller private sector roles as models, then you’ve basically undercut your entire argument.
Sorry that should be 5% of Swedes, but that doesn’t change my point, which is that the private sector is far less in Sweden than under the ACA.
How do people with cancer get treatment with the US’s universal health care? I don’t think they treat that in the emergency room.
As opposed, of course, to the Republicans who were completely honest in their descriptions of death panels, mass executions of the elderly and disabled, forced euthanasia, involuntary abortions, mandatory microchip insertions, surprise home inspections by armed government officials, mandatory diet programs, debtor’s prisons for people who failed to buy health insurance, free Viagra for pedophiles, and the complete collapse of the western economy that were all supposed to occur as a result of the ACA’s passage.
I’m curious. Did your sister purchase her plan on an exchange? Because the subsidies reduce the deductible and co-pays for low-income people. Unless she’s in a state that refused Medicaid expansion. Is that’s what is going on?
One of my friends is repeating the meme that the next thing to happen will be that there will be a tax placed on all our group insurance plans, that we individuals will end up having to pay (it will start to count toward our overall compensation).
Is there any truth to this prospect, or is this more right-wing talk radio BS?
Well, yeah certain people do accuse one party of being anti-geriatric, particularly when they consider cutting Medicare. We have been subsidizing health risk by age for a very long time, and most Americans don’t want to go back to the days when we didn’t. Now we are subsidizing health risk across genders, which seems plainly fair to me.
I understand the analogy, but it’s not that apt. In particular because the actuarial data supporting the higher risk levels for male drivers points towards differences in behavior, not underlying physical differences between the sexes. I don’t really like being charged more because science shows I’m likely to act differently, but that’s a different situation than being charged more purely as a function of my gender.
Especially when you consider that the primary driver for higher health-care costs for women, as I understand it, is child birth. And quality, affordable pre- and post-natal care seems like an obvious public benefit.
This is even worse than the driving example, because it even more directly points towards the difference in rates being a function of difference in behavior. To me, charging more for a female hair cut is more akin to charging more for health care for smokers - both groups are likely to incur more costs due to choices they make, not merely for who they are.
I would have to consider the data, but I wouldn’t be automatically against banning gender as a consideration in auto insurance rates. I would likely want it coupled with enhanced punishment for DUI/speeding/etc.
There is a pretty powerful argument that assuming an individual of a particular gender will act the way statistics indicate the gender as a whole will act is discriminatory. It is the definition of stereotyping. It’s clearly preferable to me to extract the cost of bad behavior from the people committing the behavior if at all possible.
There will be a tax on what is considered “cadillac” or “luxury” level of insurance. I suspect it’ll get withheld from your total compensation if the company passes it on to you, but I doubt that they will say you get some sort of 40% excise tax raise.
I don’t think that most group plans are in that ball park, though.
It’s sort of the opposite of right-wing talk radio BS. It’s something generally supported by economists of all stripes but the only politicians who have put it out there are Republicans like Dave Camp (and maybe Romney/Ryan, I can’t recall if they were specific enough to call it out): http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/02/26/new-house-gop-tax-reform-plan-drops-tax-rates-popular-deductions/
There is the Cadillac insurance tax, but that’s pretty limited and is already part of the ACA.
This is a great idea - since it would inevitably lead to a government run single payer system. Any person with a pre-existing condition who loses coverage or becomes unemployed would have to be picked up by the government. This will be massive - and expensive. You could only pay for it with a big tax increase, on anyone or on those with private insurance. This won’t go over well, so the solution would be to migrate healthier and cheaper people from private insurance to the government insurance to increase the risk pool.
How would you propose to pay for this, by the way? And get it by the Republicans?
By the way, being happy with your insurance today is not the same thing as being happy with it tomorrow. If you are well, the minimal cost policy makes you happy. When something goes wrong, and your insurance is inadequate, it is too late to change.
In the average state, Obamacare will increase underlying premiums by 41 percent. As we have long expected, the steepest hikes will be imposed on the healthy, the young, and the male. And Obamacare’s taxpayer-funded subsidies will primarily benefit those nearing retirement—people who, unlike the young, have had their whole lives to save for their health-care needs.