I couldn’t find any pure objective source data, but here’s a piece from a right-wing blog, quoting the St Petersburg Times:
I wouldnt necessarily trust the blog but I do trust the Census.
What makes it different? Money out of your paycheck is money out of your paycheck. Seems like special pleading to me.
They’re also penalized for every year they didn’t enroll but could have. It’s not the same as being forced to pay but it seems a pretty tenuous difference.
What if **Panache **dies before that other day comes?
If your universe is one guy, then yes I agree. But the paycheck deductions (tax) are based on how much you make (and are uncapped, unlike SS).
I assume a forced heatlh insurance purchase would vary in price by what you do for a living (race car driver vs teacher, for example), how old you are, where you live, do you smoke, etc.
To the OP: even if you’re not going to be covered on your parents’ plan anymore (as a full-time college student, say), it’s worth checking whether you can still be covered on that plan under COBRA. I haven’t had to look into this since 1989, but back then, I remember checking and being told that COBRA would cover me if the reason for losing group coverage was no longer being a qualifying dependent. It’s not forever, but it’s a stopgap measure.
I want to point out something no one has explicitly pointed out yet. The OP is getting thrown under the bus by Republicans NOT Democrats but is blaming the Democrats for something that hasn’t even happened yet!
If the Republicans had a supermajority right now you would be getting no help. Not even the concept of help. “Health Care Reform” with an ® behind it means not being able to sue your doctor if he screws up. It means you can open up a Savings Account(!) and if you forgot to put some savings away for that rainy day, well too bad for you, unpatriotic American!
Republicans want insurance company profits to stay high and for Americans to stay ignorant and complacent. But the OP as an average citizen with a pre-existing condition means nothing to them. He is of no value to them whatsoever. He is destined to die in poverty and pain. And he’s going to do this screaming at the Democrats about how they threw him under the bus.
(bolding mine)
(calm tone, we’re out of the pit)
you sure about that? Most of the non-biased sources I’ve read do not show outsized profits for the health insurance industry. I understand that runs counter to the HCR template you hear in this echo chamber, but a fact’s a fact.
So, I assume that either you didn’t know this, or you feel that 3.4% is too high of a profit margin. If the latter, what’s an acceptable margin in your opinion?
To make you feel better, you’re not alone:
From what I know of the health bill, there are caps to how much they can charge you for insurance. But even if not,
richer people have to pay more than their “share” (if you divided it equally amonst all citizens) in Defense Spending. They pay more than what they receive in Police and Fire Department services, roads and bridges and dams, etc. But this is not viewed as a problem. I don’t see why it’s a problem with regards to health care either.
Let’s be clear. The Democrats aren’t throwing you under the bus, the Republicans are. The Democrats are merely doing anything they can to get a single Republican to vote for the plan, but the goosestepping on the right wants to do anything they can to make it irrelevant. The only healthcare reform the Republicans want, is the ability to once again take away the rights of patients with tort reform. As long as tort reform includes the ability to sue insurance companies for denying care, I’m all for it.
Yes, you can get a group plan. However, if you have a pre-existing condition, it will affect the group’s overall rate and at least in my case it made it difficult or impossible to get hired (since thier insurance rates would go up by an enormous amount) and impossible to get a group plan for my own company as it would be $4700/mo for two employees.
Are you saying the Repubs did not vote for that?
George has a great discussion of why the constitutionality of Obama’s HCR bill is questionable at best, here
In a nutshell, the Commerce Clause is being again trotted out to justify a forced purchase. If you accept that amount of elasticity in that clause (ie, Congress can not only regulate commercial activities in which people choose to engage, but also can require that they in fact engage in those commercial activities), then Congress’s power is pretty much infinite, which is something the founders definitely did not envision.
As he states, could Congress have forgone Cash For Clunkers and simply ordered every American to have to buy an American car? Would that have been constitutional? If not, what’s the difference, other than scale?
The Democrats could eliminate the filibuster today if they wanted to. They have the power but not the will.
Or, they could simply force the GOP to actually filibuster, and then run a massive PR campaign highlighting the fact that every 12 minutes, somebody in this country dies because they lack health coverage. Maybe they’d still lose, but at least they’d be able to say they actually tried. But all they are doing right now is rolling over and playing dead.
Ok, so assuming for the sake of argument that “forced purchases” are illegal, can’t we simply get around that hurdle by relabeling it as a tax? The 16th amendment gives Congress unfettered authority to tax incomes.
I agree, and they should. But eliminating the filibuster is a major change in the way our legislature works, so I understand the hesitance to do so. They would likely lose seats for doing it, but I don’t think that the seats they lose would be enough to change the majority. Even if it were enough, the Republicans would quickly offend the moderate majority, and lose it. I think it was a mistake not to call the “nuclear option” bluff in the first place. The filibuster no longer serves it’s intended purpose.
Letting the people who disagree with your bill talk forever on the Floor of the Senate in front of the cameras is not a way to pass legislation – that’s essentially what happened all autumn, and it made the the bill less popular. Given the polity’s lack of education and interest in matters of policy and the press’ inability to cover complex issues without distorting them, it’s a recipe for disaster.
Bitch all you want – I’m doing it too. But make sure you call your Congressman and Senators first. Call them now.
–Cliffy
I’m willing to raise my hand and admit that I continue to assume health insurance companies are raking in profits over 20%. I appreciate being reminded that they don’t.
But there are two extra factors you should consider: 1.) The fact that there IS profit, and that there is more than one insurance company. ie that 3.4% might be $1billion from a single company, but if there are 90 companies that’s the $90billion required to insure the remaining 50million Americans. I don’t actually know what the profit is in real terms, or the number of companies making profit. Anyone know those two figures? In return, I’ll ask you, is there a total amount of profit that would eventually bother you?
2.) Even as their profit approaches zero, as we’ve seen with banks, there is also the annoyance of bonuses and executive compensation. Like my fictitious example above, if the CEO at one of those companies makes $1billion a year, and there are 90 CEOs, you’ve got your $90billion required to cover 50billion uninsured Americans. Is there an upper limit on exec pay that would eventually bother you?
And with that said, I do want to thank you for reminding me of a myth that I continue to perpetuate.
I would have no constitutional problem if Congress were to pass a tax to pay for UHC/HCR. If they were honest about the costs. That’s not the plan on the table though.
The polls, however, show the public doesn’t really want that, outside of the Amen Corner that is the SDMB, and I suspect that the Democrats are reluctant to build on their somewhat well-deserved reputation of tax-and-spenders in an election year, especially in light of the new $1.3T deficit (which poll after poll has shown that Americans care more about than health care reform).
emack, your response is entirely too reasonable, you better change your stripes quick or they’ll strip your SDMB logon…
Aetna, the biggest, seems to avgabout 400m/quarter. There are a lot of people who think health care ought to be restricted to non-profits, sounds like you’re one of them. There’s really nothing stopping any non-profit from getting into that business; I assume access to the capital/equity markets is what causes the market to be dominated by the for-profits; the fact that they can raise funds through stock offerings theoretically lowers their cost of capital, and therefore theoretically should pass along lower costs to consumers… assuming that there is adequate competition in the various markets for health insurance, which there isn’t.
As for exec pay limitations, I have two problems with that:
a) it’s not the government’s job to poke their big nose into there - that’s the board’s job.
b) are you sure that they are making as much as you think? Aetna is the 22nd largest payer of exec comp in the country. Most of thetop guysare at oil companies (another popular target…), fedex, and of course the king, Larry Ellison.
Do you think the government should limit the pay of Oracle’s CEO, or Eisner at Disney? Do you think that beverage companies, which top the list at avg 25% profit, should have a cap on what they are allowed to charge for Coke or Pepsi?
I don’t, but of course everyone is entitled to their opinion.