People keep saying this, but is there an actual cite somewhere that shows that 18-35-year-olds don’t want insurance rather than can’t afford it? Gen X is the first generation to make less than their parents and millenials are supposed to be doing even worse financially, so I’m having a hard time imagining that there are many people under 35 in that other oft cited group of people who make $70,000 or more but still chose not to pay for insurance.
The problem with the bill isn’t that it isn’t all we’d hoped, it’s that it’s not a good bill. It’s fucking toxic. It would probably be better for the bill to fail as it currently exists rather than pass some half-assed piece of crap that straight up requires us to purchase a private consumer good than to see Democrats get re-elected. The future of Health care is more important than picayune partisan electoral concerns.
For a healthy 18-35 year old insurance is simply not worth the money. The vast majority of time they put in more than they get out in the short term. A major reason to have it is that if something does go wrong it would be difficult/very expensive to get insurance after the fact. No denying of pre-existing conditions would eliminate that risk, and give more incentive to youngsters to opt out, driving up prices for everyone who actually needs the insurance.
It was “in the past 10 years” for me.
You could do what I did… sell most everything, put the rest in storage and leave the USA. Lots of places in this world where you can find work and earn enough to support you locally. Getting private insurance overseas is pretty simple.
High deductible insurance is fairly cheap for people who are young. When I was in college a few years ago I got a 2k deductible plan for $40/month.
You can get a high deductible plan for $50-100. I’d love to have one of those plans. However
- I have had health problems in the past
- Even if I have a policy, they will likely rescind it if I am ever hit by a bus by finding a technicality.
- I have moral objections to buying their product, but would if I have to.
Here’s a thought, get a job! You’re graduating, what else were you planning to do? As far as I know if it’s a group plan they cover everyone.
On a more serious note, can someone (Magiver?) tell my why the US system allows for this to happen in the first place? How is it that you NOW blame the Democrats? How long has this been a problem?
There are lots of **different proposals ** floating around, and it’s not clear whether the one in the OP will prevail.
This is why Peggy Noonan’s idea to just pass the parts of health care that we all agree on was so inane. The pieces have to fit together. As Krugman said:
The Senate bill actually goes beyond that though, insofar as it is fiscally responsible. Over the short run, the next 10 years, it cuts the budget deficit. Over the long run it initiates a process designed to lower the growth of health care spending. As Josh Gordon of the Concord Coalition said, “"If you’re looking at cost containment as being lowering healthcare inflation through delivery system reform, this bill reforms that more than any other bill prior.” Health care reform separates the true deficit hawks from the phonies.
At most this is an incentive for people who are 18 to buy insurance just as the penalty for not buying insurance is. The whole point of health care reform is to get you into the system. You are not going to be grandfathered OUT of it from the start. Reach back and unbunch anything that feels cottony soft.
In the meantime buy any insurance your school offers because it looks better when buying another policy if you already have insurance. That applies to all other insurance policies.
I believe the Democrats showed their true colors when they voted to continue to ban medications from Canada. I rely on those medications to keep me alive, and I cannot afford U.S. prices. If that’s indicative of the kind of decisions they’re making, I sincerely hope they fail.
Here’s how the real world works panache45. There’s the Republicans, the Democrats and the special interests. Choose 2. Bipartisanship can defeat the special interests. But since the Republicans adopted their strategy of 100% obstructionism as exemplified by this chart showing a sharp increase in the number of cloture votes (corresponding to comparably high numbers of filibusters), then it becomes easy for big Pharma to peel off a couple of compliant Dems from certain states. So we have to put off that reform for another day.
That is certainly indicative of the kinds of decisions they are making: they are operating in the real world. But the Senate and House efforts have received praise from serious-minded healthcare policy experts, men like Henry Aaron of Brookings and Gruber of MIT. The 2009 bills deserve passage: taken as a the whole they are profiles in political courage in the face of vicious misinformation and demagoguery.
Healthcare is 1/6 of the US economy: we have average life expectancy within the OECD while US spending is literally off the charts.* Any reform of healthcare requires that lots of toes get stepped on. Opportunities for health care reform materialize approximately every 15-20 years: if the US doesn’t get it right this time, we are truly screwed.
- Chart from National Geographic
Have you done your part? Do you have a Democratic Senator or Representative? Perhaps you should pick up the telephone and tell them to pass the damn bill.
Yes. Because everyone knows that newly minted graduates have tons of jobs lined up that not only are offering to hire them, but offer group health insurance to boot.
All that talk about the worst economy since the great depression, or the fact that youth are among the hardest hit, or the fact that much of the work that new graduates can get is temp work (and has no benefits like health insurance) is just whining.
The just world phenomena (aka blaming the victim) strikes again.
If all those rape victims in Darfur weren’t wearing such sexy potato sacks, maybe they wouldn’t have been attacked.
Youth unemployment rates are 20%+. Most jobs we have available do not offer health care as a benefit. The private market does not cover pre-existing conditions.
Our problems with health care are long. But it is a mix of racism, right wing takeovers and spiraling costs/political capital making it a 3rd rail issue.
It is a flawed bill, but people are desperate. And sadly a plutocratic bill that protects the profits and monopolies of pharma and insurance companies is better than what we have now.
After we give people some sense of security, we can work more on fighting the plutocracy.
Hopefully there will be efforts to pass additional reform via reconciliation.
In some states, you can. I can’t find a plan in NH for under $100/mo and that’s with a $5,000 deductable. If we’re talking “just” a $2,000 deductable, that’s over $150/mo. There are almost no options for non-employer based insurance in NH: I keep finding the same three plans from blue cross and nothing else.
Lucky you. My wife is in the process of putting together the paperwork for “past 5 years.” For some reason, determining whether or not SHE has a pre-existing condition that ought not to be covered involves submitting proof for EVERYONE ON THE POLICY, which includes me and my 1.5 year-old-daughter.
I begged my former insurance provider to give me certificates proving coverage. AFAIK, they’re not incentivized or bound by law to do so. Thankfully, they came through, but I could envision a scenario where I don’t get proof of prior coverage documents and my current insurance company won’t process the claim.
The 5-year medical history is a stall tactic, IMHO. Designed to make people just give up and pay out of pocket.
I hate health insurance companies.
I just wanted to point out that where I live a good family policy, if purchased privately, costs over $60,000.00 a year which is way more than the guy making 70K takes home.
A crappy HMO policy still cost more than $40K a year
http://www.aetna.com/members/individuals/health/plan_details/NewYork/NYHMO1Q10ratesfinal.pdf
So the guy with a family making 70K a year still can’t buy insurance and still have money left for stuff like food and rent.
Are people forced to pay Medicare insurance premiums? Note I consider that different than the FICA tax on the paycheck
We accidentally did an experiment where I work, which proved quite revealing (I work in corporate finance). We offerred our employees a $1k cash payment instead of insurance coverage (for which they paid $1k per year for employee-only and the company paid about $4k - we are self insured for the most part and single employees are really cheap, employee + spouse and family are much more expensive).
Thousands of single employees took the cash (effectively $2k per year more in their pockets). But this self selected group was so young and so healthy that our average cost went up, not down for the remaining employees. The people who CHOSE to drop coverage for $2k per year actually cost less than $2k per year.
The remaining tens of thousands actually had a cost increase as a result of these people dropping out, which was quite the opposite of what we expected.
A few thousand others who had associate + spouse or associate + family also dropped coverage, but they almost all went on their spouse’s insurance. We saved a boat load of money on this group. Over the next two years, most of these people came back as the spouse’s employers got wise and started charging spousal surcharges or giving even bigger incentives to shift back to us.
The end result is that after a few years, thousands of 20-30 year olds are uninsured by choice. If they are in Massachusetts they have to pay a penalty on their state taxes, but apparently still come out ahead, SO LONG AS THEY DON’T GET SICK. Two-job families where both could get coverage are paying more than they used to due to the spousal surcharges.
Of course when some of those 20-30 year olds get some kind of chronic condition, they will be back in the pool when open enrollment rolls along, and drive the average cost up again. If they have some kind of accident, they will be busted, but typically they don’t have material amounts of assets to lose.
I should say that the median income is only around $30k, so it is not like the $2k per year is nothing to them, and I am sure that many of the ones who dropped coverage are in the $22-25k range.
The whole thing seemed like a microcosm of the health insurance problem. The only way to bring the average cost down is to force people into the system for whom the insurance is a bad deal on average. They are better off paying out of pocket and going bust if they have a $50k event, never mind a $1M event.
Employer provided health care is really an abomination. Because we are one of the few companies that provides a good package of highly subsidized health care, we attract all the employees with families and health issues. Our competitors hire the single young people by offering $2/hour more but no health care. They pay a $575 fine per year to the state per employee, but they still come out way ahead.
The reason why the non-group plans are so expensive is that they are caught in a vicious circle. Because they are so expensive only people who have a high risk profile want to buy in. Then the company plays all kinds of games to exclude the really high risks, but these games impact everyone trying to get in, raising the costs some more. So even more people decide it is not worth it. Soon you have companies offering $50k plans, and only attracting people who would cost them $100k.
There is really only one way out of this, short of an NHS-type system. A health insurnance mandate with a single national risk pool. People with low risk subsidize those with high risk. Because everyone is paying there is pressure to keep costs down one way or the other. Rationing, lowering providers incomes, fewer pharmaceuticals, whatever. But at least it makes the choices explicit.
Anyone who promises that things can be made cheaper and cover more people better than the current system is blowing smoke. Somebody somewhere is going to pay more. And I say this as a logn time and big-time redistributionist: If you want to control the cost, you had better be financing this with the broadest base possible, not by subsidizing away all the cost to the lowest 50% income earners. Otherwise the costs will just spiral. If you look at how health care is financed in Europe and East Asia, you will see that it is NOT progressive taxation. It is either a premium based system (fixed $x per covered person) or a payroll tax based system. So if costs go up 10%, almost all of the VOTERS see their costs go up 10%.