I don’t make it a habit of responding to nonsense and/or misleading questions.
You are stating that the requirement (to use 80% of premiums on patient care) will fail as a matter of course, when it has already worked. Trying for semantic gotcha games is puerile.
To throw you a bone though, nothing is immune to fraud. The question is, how many people will chance it. By your standards there shouldn’t be laws against murder or speeding.
Is there something onerous and difficult about insurance at a mere 20 percent profit? Whatever happened to the magic of competition, the Invisible Finger?
Shayna, read the law itself, and not some “administration official” with a self-serving lie. I know it’s hard to read yourself away from the echo chamber of publications that reinforce your view, but it’s possible. I read the SDMB in large part because so many people here don’t share my viewpoint, and I’m willing to hazard a guess that you don’t do something similar.
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Shayna, your blogger is either lying or stupid -
It was never out of the economy, and anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with economics knows it.
What does this stupid blogger think, that it was buried in the back yard someplace?
Regards,
Shodan
What are you specifically arguing against? Specifically?
It certainly was in the economy. It wasn’t, however, in the hands of consumers. And it wasn’t being used to pay premiums.
There is a missing the forest for the trees going on here, because you need it to be evil.
All I know is that if this rebate is due to something that Obama did, it’s wrong and should be given back to the companies. This creeping socialism due the Sharia law that Obama has put in place needs to be stopped!
On the surface, yes, it’s a good thing. However, it will be counter-balanced by the bad stuff. Here’s one example.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/2/obamacares-big-secret/
That’s an opinion piece by someone who’s obviously ideologically opposed.
You are aware of the difference between facts and opinion, right?
Insurance company dollars just fly away into a black hole and never get spent on anything else? Insurance companies don’t pay money back out to shareholders or employees as wages that end up getting spent? Insurance companies don’t have to act as consumers when they buy all the shit any company needs to run?
This is just part and parcel of the deep economic ignorance from the left on these boards. Insurance companies are consumers too. You guys always grasp the thinnest threads of understanding the economy, but it shows you lack a true understanding because you fail to recognize the vast interconnected nature of the real market, and instead try to break it down into simplistic concepts like “consumers = Ma and Pa Kettle but not Joe Health Insurance Company.”
What was the piece linked to by the OP?
Again, you are confused. The money was being extracted from premiums, not to pay for medical care. Now that money is rebated to the purchaser and the insurance companies need to work leaner. This is a good thing.
This is very easy to understand if you aren’t ideologically invested in the concept that it must be evil. Listen to yourself. The fact that the wasted cost is being returned to consumers is a bad thing, to you, because you’d rather the people over-charging get to spend the money.
That’s moronic.
Yes, but they aren’t the consumers that are purchasing health insurance.
If your knee would stop jerking for just a moment you might see that.
Again, this is you screaming at clouds. You know exactly what I mean, or you would if you spent a moment thinking about it instead of dodging and weaving because your initial stance is drivel.
The OP’s initial link was to an opinion piece, but we’ve since begun talking about the facts of the legislation.
The other opinion piece didn’t seem to be heavy on facts. Since it accepted without hesitation the words of an ideologically opposed congressperson as gospel. I’d like to know specifically why the “Obamacare” legislation is worse than us not having it.
Also, in your previous post, I’m still not clear on what you were arguing against.
I understand why employers might decide not to cover their employees if the coverage costs more than the penalty. What I don’t get is why employers who would do so are currently covering their employees when there is no penalty?
Really good point. Many on the conservative side are so angry because of the misinformation being fed them by the right-wing media, that they don’t take a moment to think about this stuff.
I think maybe you are confused.
Where did I say the money wasn’t being extracted from premiums?
Where did I say it was being used for medical care? What I said was if the insurance companies had kept it, it would have gone towards however insurance companies spend their money. Office supplies, wages, dividend payments, investing in the market so that they turn a profit (that is what most insurance companies do by the way, they invest their premiums.) I was refuting the simplistic concept that the only consumers here are the policy holders.
Where did I say it wasn’t a good thing to try and get insurance companies to spend a larger portion of their premiums on medical care?
Where did I say this was evil?
Where did I say this was bad?
Where did I say I’d rather customers were overcharged?
I think you’ve come at this discussion with some preconceptions about me, probably based on something from another thread, and are seeing me saying things I’ve never actually said.
I don’t have any problem at all with this portion of the PPACA. What I have a problem with in general is:
Acting like $1.3 BILLION is such a huge number it needs to be put in all caps. When divvied up, it is pocket change. This is a minor, minor issue. Shayna wanted to act like it was a lot more important due to some serious Obama-love that makes her exaggerate anything to do with him in a positive light. I also pointed out the specific dollar amounts that are going to specific groups: individual policy holders, small businesses, and large institutional customers. I pointed out that unless you were one of those individual policy holders you would not be getting the rebate, your employer would. Shayna insisted the law requires your employer to pass the rebate back to you, but I gave multiple cites showing it explicitly does not require that. Most people will not be getting a rebate, some 2/3rds of the money is not going back to individuals. Basically my point is “sure that’s great but it’s not really very noteworthy.”
The people who come in and start saying blatantly un-scientific things like “this is $1.3bn savings!!” Savings for who? Even the individual policy holders aren’t really “saving” anything, they instead actually made an interest free loan to their insurance company. Due to the time value of money they actually lost money on the deal.
You have spent the entire thread either minimizing or laughing at this aspect of the legislation. I presumed you had some ideological goal, since your objections were so nonsensical. If you were just playing devil’s advocate or whatever, I humbly beg your pardon.
It’s not the biggest thing in the world, granted. But it is applying pressure to keep insurance rates down. That’s what I like.
If you charge me a thousand dollars to shine my widgets and give me back 300 at the end of the year, most anyone would see that as savings.
Framing it as, “An interest free loan” is negative spin, to what end?
So the truth is “negative spin.” Are you one of those people that gets really excited when the IRS gives you a fat rebate check? Unless that check is due to some tax credits that actually give you back more money than you paid in, the larger the rebate check the less money you had throughout the year and the more money you were lending to the government at 0% interest.
If a bank makes a loan at 0% interest they lose out on the interest it could have earned pretty much anywhere else (almost everything you can put money in will earn more than 0.0%), it is no different from consumers.
During the year the insurance company had that money on their books, I’m willing to bet they made money from it.
Dude, it costs 1000 dollars to shine widgets. At the end of the year I get 300 dollars back.
I should throw that money away, because it’s “an interest free loan?”
Are you aware how utterly insane that is?
Also, as an aside, the point of the ratio part of the law, is to lower premiums so that in future times the insurance companies will charge less, so they don’t have to refund anyone.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/27/obamacare-costs-double-in-two-years/
What are the chances we hear this on MSNBC? lol just kidding. Seriously, can’t we all agree this is a bad thing?