Well, I see your point in that. But that seems to lead to the fact that ALL insurance is unneeded, and any type at all is worthless.
So in the scenario up thread, you would tell the girl making $10 an hour and can’t afford health insurance - “Don’t worry, it’s better for you if you don’t have insurance”?
No, I’d say “if you get a disease or injury you’re fucked, just like if your car breaks down or you get pregnant”. Poor people have it bad. You’re missing my point.
Poor people can’t afford insurance or medical treatment. As long as the government is assisting them, it makes more sense, to me, to just give them money for health care rather than give them money for insurance.
You’d guess wrong.
And I’m honestly happy for you that your dad lived to 95. I’m glad mine didn’t. His last year was the utmost shit, for him mostly… and everyone else involved. No amount of insurance (he had it, to the max) or money could alter the outcome.
We all die. Its just how much it costs us and our loved ones. Time, money, emotions, whatever. name your currency.
Pretty much. The exceptions would be coverage for an asset you’re using to secure a loan, like a house or car, and liability insurance. Because they won’t let you get the loan or drive without them.
The other ones aren’t worthless, they’re just a tradeoff. Tradeoffs with costs. Costs that many poor people can’t afford. The ability to say “a flood that may not happen for forty years would bankrupt me, but a couple hundred extra a year won’t break the bank, so I’ll play it safe and get flood insurance” is a luxury. Luxuries can be worth it to people who can afford them.
The problem with not having universal healthcare isn’t that people don’t have the luxury of an insurance plan. It’s that they don’t have the necessity of important health care. Just like the problem of unemployment isn’t that people don’t have something to keep them busy most of the day, it’s that they don’t have money to pay their bills. The bottom line is poverty in each case. And you fix poverty by giving people money and healthcare, not paying some third party that may or may not help people after they line their own pockets first.
If we all had exactly the same medical bills, guaranteed, every year, insurance would be worthless, since we could budget for them.
But there is a large number of people with small bills and a tail of people with gigantic bills. “Losing” money if you are in the majority is no big deal (if you have it) and you get peace of mind. But you can’t budget for being an outlier, so if you wind up there without insurance you get screwed.
This is because there is only one of you. If you are an insurance company or a big company who self-insures you can predict your costs. That’s why big companies self insure - it is cheaper, and the insurance company they contract with just administers the plan.
If you are Bill Gates you don’t need insurance because no expense is going to be a problem for you. If you have a reasonable amount of money paying for insurance is not a problem, but getting hit with a gigantic bill. But if you don’t have a lot of money the pain of insurance is great enough you may want to bet you don’t get sick.
It is all statistics and the differing value of money depending on how much you have.
Why is that? Why is car insurance mandatory even if you own the car without any loan? Is that just a scam to line the car insurance providers’ pockets?
Well, I don’t understand what you would do instead of the insurance paradigm for health care we have today.
There are multiple kinds of car insurance. The mandatory one (liability) is the one that will pay for the other party’s car if you cause an accident that damages it.
It’s up to you if you want the kind that pays to repair your own car (collision/comprehensive).
Yes, I understand what car insurance is. Why is the liability portion mandatory? Why can’t I opt out and just choose to pay with my own money if I cause an accident?
I know a number of people in Florida who fall into the “working poor” (or “working working class”) segment who are really getting nailed under the ACA, both because the plans are overpriced (lack of oversight from insurance commissioner) and because Florida didn’t expand Medicaid or take any money from the federal government to help out people with modest means. That’s not the fualt of the ACA; that’s the fault of the posturing asshats who were elected to state government posts. It is really hard on those people affected.
How is the employer’s decision to purchase that health care plan the fault of the ACA?
This is why I hope that high-deductible plans go by the wayside – they are a false savings. People wait until they’re really sick to see the doctor for exactly the reasons **Shagnasty **describes. Then treatment costs more to the insurance company. It’s ridiculous, and we know from a LOT of data analysis that it’s a stupid way to try to save money.
I really hope that people get fed up enough with the bullshit with insurance companies blaming the ACA for everything, and still screwing the insured, and we finally manage to get universal, single-payer coverage. I’d be putting myself out of a job, but damn, it’d be worth it to find another career.
Because there is no guarantee you’ll have the money to pay for the other guys car. What if you hit an $80,000 car brand new off the lot and total it. And the guy inside gets hurt and needs $200,000 worth of medical care. And you have a net worth of $30,000?
The other reason some people can’t afford insurance is that not all states took the medicare expansion. That leaves a fairly significant gap.
Right now the government gives money to insurance companies so that poor people can have access to health care they can’t otherwise afford. I propose that the government give money to hospitals and doctors (or the patient themselves) instead, bypassing the expensive and useless middle men. Basically expand medicaid to cover people who can’t afford insurance, except I’d probably go a step further and expand medicaid to everyone, and eliminate the need for insurance companies entirely.
Because it’s illegal to drive without liability insurance. But an important distinction is that you don’t need insurance just to own a car, only to drive it on public roads. And nevertheless, many people drive illegally without insurance. That’s a legit, though illegal, decision if you can’t afford insurance and you need a car to earn a living. I mean, you can mandate something all you want, but you can’t get blood from a stone.
cite?
Because nobody likes to be tied up in court for years trying to get blood from a turnip.
I don’t normally carry water for insurance companies but…you have a distorted view of insurance. Most insurance is a hedge, but hedges are not necessarily insurance. Put simply, insurance is the pooling and distribution of risk so in that sense its a bit different than using oil futures to lock in a price. You are paying a premium (which is close to your expected cost of health care minus copays and deductibles) to avoid the cost associated with health care.
There is enough competition in the insurance field (and now there is a legal requirement) that the cost of insurance approximates the amount paid out in benefits minus administrative costs.
And what if you aren’t that average person? Then you impose a cost on the rest of society.
No, not really, its a distorted view of things.
What you are talking about is either nationalized health care or single payer health care, universal health care is a much more flexible definition. You can mandate that everyone buys health insurance if you also provide subsidies to anyone that cannot afford the premiums. The problem is that Obamacare’s method of subsidies included an expanded medicaid that some states decided to reject.
You realize that under Obamacare, it is illegal for insurance companies not to pay out at least 80% (75%?) of the premiums it collects in the form of benefits. They actually have to refund money to the customer so that the amounts paid by the customer base is no more than 125% of the benefits paid in benefits to the customer base. Its called the medical loss ratio and most insurance companies have no problem meeting it, most of them had no problem meeting that ratio even before Obamacare.
So you are factually wrong (unless you think 20% or 25% is the “lion’s share”). You might argue that letting insurance companies keep 20% of the revenues to pay dividends, salaries, taxes and other business expenses is too rich but they are not using the “lion’s share” to pay these things.
Someone making 13K/year is eligible for medicaid. They don’t pay anyone including an insurance company.
So isn’t the answer that you should use an in network doctor or choose an insurance company that your doctor has an agreement with. If you are using a doctor that basically doesn’t take insurance then that sounds like a personal decision.
Sure, until they get really sick and some of them invariably will, in fact poor people tend to get sick a lot more frequently than wealthier people.