Will union members be exempted from the “Cadillac” health-care tax?
62 thoughts on “That Will Increase Its Popularity”
I wonder why anyone thinks passing this bill is going to be better than not? I don’t really mind that the Democrat party has a death wish, I just wish they wouldn’t involve the rest of us in their suicide.
Hubris regularly brings down politicians and political parties. What’s odd to me is how much further the Democrats have been willing to go than even the Republicans did when they were in control. I think the problem is that they think people turned on the GOP because of some permanent lurch leftward, which is totally delusional.
I wonder why anyone thinks passing this bill is going to be better than not?
It will be better for the 12 million people who were discriminated against by insurance companies because of pre-existing conditions over the last three years. It will be better for the 30 million people who will now have coverage. It will be better for the tens of thousands (estimates vary) of people who die every year due to their lack of health insurance. It will be better for millions of low-income families who will be able to afford insurance and will be protected from medical bankruptcy.
Either of the bills being considered will do a great deal of good for millions of Americans.
Ironically, the GOP loss of support in 2004-2008 was at least as much because of disappointment from the “right” as the “left”. The pro-islamist and civil liberties factions on the left were appalled by Bush and the fiscal conservative/limited government factions on the right were appalled by Bush and even more appalled by the prospect of McCain.
Now the Dems are in a similar squeeze; they’ve taken fiscal irresponsibility to new depths, realpolitik constraints have limited their ability to appease the pro-islamist and civil liberties “left”, and the fact that partisanship and backroom dealing have at the very least not gotten any better with Obama’s election and that government reach in to the private economy is being attempted far beyond campaign rhetoric are annoying whole new sectors of the electorate.
Either of the bills being considered will do a great deal of good for millions of Americans.
Hmmm. If it’s such a fantastic deal, why are people compelled to participate at the point of a gun? Which is what a government mandate is.
It will be better for the 12 million people…pie in sky et cetera.
Not so. All you can say is that it is supposed to be better — this is the intention of the bill. But how many very complex changes work out exactly the way you intended them? Even in your own life: you invest in this opportunity because it will pay well — but it doesn’t, oops. At work you volunteer for that task because people will see you in a particular positive light, with good consequences, but, alas, that’s not actually what happens.
So maybe 12 million people who’ve had cancer will now be able to buy insurance. Yay! Or, on the other hand, maybe there was damn good reason why they couldn’t, and by trying to force water to flow uphill you’ll just create more mayhem — maybe institutions will find some other way not to make that contract, and in the process dump a lot of contracts they would previously have made. Maybe the number of people without adequate health insurance will increase, not decrease. You hope not. You intend not. But you’re in no position at all to reliably predict not, and especially not when you’ve got a hastily crafted sprawling crufty Frankenstein monster of a bill that has been slammed through without much public debate on its details and with a whole slew of weird politically-driven exceptions and mandates and carve-outs.
It will be better for the 12 million people who were discriminated against by insurance companies because of pre-existing conditions over the last three years.
It will be worse for the 300+ million people who weren’t discriminated against by insurance companies, precisely because they’ll be paying for people who have pre-existing conditions.
It will be better for the 30 million people who will now have coverage.
These are in addition to those 12 million above, right? No coverage and no reasons not to get coverage, means they didn’t want to pay for it. In other words, self-insured by choice. What’s the mechanism by which these guys actually get coverage?
I just see a subsidy combined with a tax penalty in the Senate Bill, if the self-insured don’t play ball. They might even have to pay more after subsidy in the Brave New World of the Senate Bill (after all the various changes in either bill are either going to result in much higher insurance premiums, insurance companies leaving markets, or bankrupt firms). As Carl says, we might see more uninsured after than before. The House bill at least had the public option where you can choose to mooch off the public dime for your health care needs.
So Jim, it’s fine according to you to have a sick person approach a private company, backed up by a government pointing a gun, and say: “I’m sick, and you have to pay for it.”
Why limit it to insurance companies? Why not just have the sick people go to any company that still has some money left? And why limit it to companies at all. Why don’t we all have them come to your door, and demand that you pay? Until you run out of money, that is. And why even involve the government? Just let the sick person have the gun, and cut out the middle man.
Obviously, when the government steals from one group of people and gives to another, it’s good for the recipients of the stolen goods. That doesn’t make it good for the nation. Paul doesn’t complain when Peter is robbed.
Having said all of that, my personal experience is quiet the opposite. My wife has had a long-standing heart condition which a dozen different cardiologists simply blew off for years. Then she began to deteriorate to the point where they actually had to read the echocardiograms, etc., and admit that if she didn’t have surgery within six months, she’d die.
Being self-employed and without adequate insurance at the time, I sought a job with anyone whose insurance company didn’t exclude pre-existing conditions, got offers from two such places, took one, and my wife had $100,000 worth of heart surgery for which we paid only $1,500. She’s alive and better than ever today because of the existing system.
The insurer is Blue Cross/Blue Shield. It’s not out of reach of anyone as far as I know. If you’re a federal employee (one of my job offers was from the USG), you can get it. You just have to look.
Jim does not have a clue–and that is is clear from all of his previous comments–as VDH has said the Utopian Luddite dream of the left is a thing of wistfulness, not reality.
If it’s such a fantastic deal, why are people compelled to participate at the point of a gun?
Because the bills in Congress destroy the insurance marketplace and replace it with a system of cross-subsidization. No one can be allowed to leave the system. Participation must be mandatory otherwise those providing the subsidies will quit (because their policies will not be worth more than what they pay for them — the present-day situation) and the system will collapse.
However, there’s not nearly enough teeth in either bill, so likely they will collapse even if the eventual contents of the box matches the label. The Feds will then need to shore it up with more debt and the existing problems will get kicked down the road into future generations per usual.
(Hmm, upon second glance, my parenthetical element above is ambiguous. I of course mean that present-day policies are worth more than their cost.)
Either of the bills being considered will do a great deal of good for re-deal millions of Americans’ goods.
FIFY there, Jim.
The only ways out I’ve seen so far are to form your own union or become Amish. How do we form a paper union? And (*&(*& I wish Heinlein had built a competing religion to Hubbard’s.
If it’s such a fantastic deal, why are people compelled to participate at the point of a gun?
To avoid self-selection.
My town has a great public library, and everyone who owns property in my town is compelled (at the point of a gun, as you put it) to participate in supporting in. For what we pay, it’s a fantastic deal. But if we let townspeople opt out of supporting the library, surely some who don’t use it would do so (perhaps thinking that they could opt back in should they want to use the library sometime in the future). That would raise the cost of participation for everyone else, such that people who use it once or twice a year would decide that it wasn’t worth it to them, so the participation rate would fall further, and the costs to those remaining would rise some more. The cycle could go on until you had so few participants that the cost would be outrageous, and the library would need to be scaled down or closed, and everyone in our town who might ever have benefitted from the presence of an excellent library would be worse off.
Maybe the number of people without adequate health insurance will increase, not decrease.
There are people who spend their lives researching questions like this; they disagree with you. For example, look at Massachusetts, which enacted a health reform plan that is very similar to the bills before Congress: they now have the lowest rate of uninsured residents of any state in the union.
It will be worse for the 300+ million people who weren’t discriminated against by insurance companies, precisely because they’ll be paying for people who have pre-existing conditions.
Again, there are people who know something about these things, and their forecast is that everyone else’s premiums will be slightly lower than before.
The House bill at least had the public option where you can choose to mooch off the public dime for your health care needs.
The public option does not spend any public dimes — you would pay premiums, just like with private insurance.
Jim, if I want to self-select myself out of this program because I am convinced it will be a boondoggle of historic proportions, who the HELL are you to tell me I can’t?
If I want a library, I put my money (indeed, a fair chunk of money you’re now telling me I MUST put to health care) into buying books and other media. If I cannot afford a medical procedure to save my life, I negotiate a scheme of payment with the medical professionals. If the procedure is not going to save my life, then I damned well do without!
I think I know better than you do how I should spend my own money. To tell me otherwise is to arrogate to yourself a position in my life that none save parents (and maybe God) should ever have. THAT is why more Americans are turning against this steaming heap by the day – if I wanted Lord Jim in charge of my health and well being, I’d notify you in writing and set it up with a legal contract. Short of that – BUTT OUT!
For what we pay, it’s a fantastic deal.
This is because your library does not criminalize bookstores or Amazon.com. If everyone was forced to use them the way the government will force everyone to use their one-size-fits-all insurance, the situation would be much less rosy.
I sought a job with anyone whose insurance company didn’t exclude pre-existing conditions, got offers from two such places, took one, and my wife had $100,000 worth of heart surgery for which we paid only $1,500. She’s alive and better than ever today because of the existing system.
She’s alive and better because the existing system includes a law that bars employer-provided group health insurance plans from discriminating on the basis of pre-existing conditions. The health bills before Congress would extend that regulation to the individual health insurance market, so that people in your situation would not be required to have or get a job with health benefits in order to get care for themselves or their families.
I’m glad that government regulations helped you and your wife, but it seems like a strange reason to oppose extending the same help to people who aren’t fortunate enough to have a job like yours.
Jim, if I want to self-select myself out of this program because I am convinced it will be a boondoggle of historic proportions, who the HELL are you to tell me I can’t?
The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. Do you really think you should be able to opt out of paying for schools? The military? The fire department?
This is because your library does not criminalize bookstores or Amazon.com. If everyone was forced to use them the way the government will force everyone to use their one-size-fits-all insurance, the situation would be much less rosy.
The bills before Congress do not criminalize private health insurance — the Senate bill does not allow for anything but private insurance. There are regulations, just as there are today, but that hardly means that plans will be “one-size-fits-all.” In December I went through the annual ritual of renewing my family’s coverage, and that for my employees, and I considered dozens of plans, with dizzying distinctions in coverage networks, deductibles, copays, coinsurance, out-of-pocket limits, etc. All of them will be legal under the bills being considered.
There would be some advantages to having fewer choices, but health reform isn’t going to give me that.
There are regulations, just as there are today, but that hardly means that plans will be “one-size-fits-all.”
Read the bill. Only expensive HMO/PPO type plans will be available. I assume these are the plans you were shopping for, right?
There would be some advantages to having fewer choices, but health reform isn’t going to give me that.
It will give me fewer choices, and I don’t have your millions to fall back on.
As I understand it, my plan would not be legal under the bills currently being considered. I have a high deductible catastrophic insurance plan, with an HSA. This is true insurance, rather than hiring an administrator to collect money from me to cover my future medical needs interest free (and tell me how I can spend it in the bargain) with an insurance plan tied in for the truly catastrophic needs insurance is supposed to be for.
But I’d have to pay a lot more money for less flexible coverage under the Pelosi/Reid/Obama plans.
As I understand it, my plan would not be legal under the bills currently being considered.
That is correct.
I have a high deductible catastrophic insurance plan, with an HSA.
The irony here is that your situation has the greatest actuarial value of all, even compared against pre-paid plans. But no soup for you!
Jim is the gift that keeps giving. First, he argues that he has a great library because everyone is forced to pay for it. Well guess what. That makes it not so great.
Then he goes on to cite the CBO as an expert on the costs of health care. I guess I need to remind Jim that CBO has to base those studies on assumptions as directed by Congress. If one of the assumptions is that the Moon is made of green cheese, then they have to use that assumption. If one of the assumptions is that the health care changes save money and cut the budget (which probably was the case with this particular study), well they have to include those assumptions. The only times I even partially believe the CBO is when they come up with results that are contrary to the convenience of Congress. In other words, the CBO has no credibility.
The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. Do you really think you should be able to opt out of paying for schools? The military? The fire department?
I can see an argument for not being able to opt out of the military. Perhaps even the fire department, if the destruction of your property doesn’t threaten other people who are covered by the fire department. But sure, being able to opt out of paying for terrible public schools sounds like a good idea. I probably would change my mind if school vouchers became the standard way to pay for school, because then you’d be paying for the education of the next generation, which has significant value to me, not merely supporting another wasteful bureaucracy.
Paying for subsidized health insurance even for the people who shouldn’t have it (that is, have “preexisting conditions”) has none of those benefits.
But sure, being able to opt out of paying for terrible public schools sounds like a good idea.
That’d be equivalent to only charging people who send a kid to school (who else would volunteer to pay?), and make primary and secondary education a totally private matter, with all costs borne by the parents. Universal public education — paid for by the entire society, not just those currently enrolled — is one of the great advances of the last couple centuries, and we consider any country without it to be unfortunate and backward.
You’d throw it away?
Only expensive HMO/PPO type plans will be available.
First of all, the bills only cover what plans will be available in the exchanges — if you’re getting coverage through an employer, for example, those rules don’t apply.
Second, the Senate bill has exchange plans with actuarial value ranging from 60 to 90% (they go 70 to 95% in the House bill), so there will be a wide range of premiums and benefits. The Senate bill includes a catastrophic, high-deductible option for young people.
That’d be equivalent to only charging people who send a kid to school (who else would volunteer to pay?), and make primary and secondary education a totally private matter, with all costs borne by the parents.
I send my kids to Catholic school. It costs me about $4k a year per kid, but that doesn’t cover the whole cost. Some of the cost is picked up by the local parish, some by the dioceses. (Organizations volunteering to pay.) Some of the students at the school who’s parents can’t afford the tuition are on full scholarships paid for by school alums anonymously. (Individuals volunteering to pay.)
Universal public education — paid for by the entire society, not just those currently enrolled — is one of the great advances of the last couple centuries, and we consider any country without it to be unfortunate and backward.
Costs in public education are out of control just like with health care for the same reason, the consumers of the product aren’t the ones paying the cost. The budget at my kids school is gone over in incredible detail every year and the costs are kept down, because it’s our money being spent.
You’d throw it away?
Yep.
That’d be equivalent to only charging people who send a kid to school (who else would volunteer to pay?), and make primary and secondary education a totally private matter, with all costs borne by the parents. Universal public education — paid for by the entire society, not just those currently enrolled — is one of the great advances of the last couple centuries, and we consider any country without it to be unfortunate and backward.
You’d throw it away?
Throw what away again? Universal public education only works if it’s education. Once you drop that part as has happened in some parts of the US, then it’s just a babysitting job for people who could be working instead.
the bills only cover what plans will be available in the exchanges — if you’re getting coverage through an employer, for example, those rules don’t apply.
Not true.
Jim, just because the state has mandated some forms of funding, does not mean it has the right to dip into our wallets for every new shiny toy it wants this week. The Soviets, among others, tried that, and failed. It did not fail because it was an oppressive police state (it outlasted Stalin with nearly 40 years to go), it failed because it could not keep up with the West financially, paying foreigners for its bread and using what production it had to try to match our current-generation weapons. The reason the collapse took everyone in the West by surprise was because we had access to the Politburo’s bank books, and the plant managers were lying to their own superiors about making quotas, all the way up the chain to Moscow. Nobody had much incentive to produce, because nobody could keep their contribution to an increase in GNP. Remember the old joke? “We will pretend to work while they pretend to pay us.” Nobody had any reason to produce anything past the absolute minimum – which they still managed to underachieve! – and so nobody did. This leads to equal distribution of all that the state has to offer. Equal shares of misery for all! Again, thank you, but I’ll pass.
The point of government is not to do for us what is simply inconvenient; it is to do for us what we are physically incapable of. If you want to add those millions of (largely phantom) uninsured citizens to the rolls of Medicare/Medicaid (47 million? 30 million? Pick a number with something solid backing it up already!), then fine. That’s what it’s there for, to cover those individuals who are physically incapable of saving for medical coverage. To axe those very rolls, and roll the money for that least-worst program into some fantastic new program (designed, built, and operated by the same people that gave us Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, the Walter Reed scandals, etc ad nauseum) that will replace what 80+% of us are quite happy with, is pure hubris, on their parts and on yours.
Don’t get me started about using this health-care debate as a stalking horse to give amnesty to millions currently here illegally. I got nothing for them. Flat nothing. Let their own governments foot their medical bills here, if their universal health care coverage is so fantastic. I’ve worked for years with foreign nationals, and with those who desired US citizenship. Some have been fortunate enough to gain it, after years, even decades of fighting incompetent bureaucrats at INS. The whole process needs fixing, I won’t even debate that point – but simply allowing millions who are here illegally to jump the line while thousands with technical skills, legally here on academic visas and the like, get the boot is not the way to do it, with any kind of short- or long-term benefits to the nation as a whole. But I digress. Back to the national health insurance scheme.
“But other nations do it!” you cry.
OK, let’s look at those other nations. I won’t be linking their own news sources; I assume you’re not in China and that Google will take you to them. Primary English-language sources are the Telegraph, the Sunday Daily Mail, and the Times of London. Secondary sources include the Guardian and BBC – though for some reason they don’t report on the fiscal malfeasance of nuLab, and the effectively-bankrupt nature of Her Majesty’s Government, nearly so much as the others. Nor the dirty hospitals, the deaths in the halls from negligence that here in the States would be considered criminal, etc.
From Britain, we see that anyone expecting emergency care (or to avoid a staph infection in the grotty hallways of NHS hospitals) gets to pay for private insurance on top of their state-mandated coverage. A months-long wait for an X-ray of a broken arm is not unheard of from anecdotal data. From Japan, we have American expats delivering the advice “Don’t get sick in Japan, and avoid needing to deliver a baby after 5 pm” due to the hospitals being run like an 8-hour office. Self-diagnosis is also common, as is a system of privately-owned hospitals that allow various forms of nepotism to serve as a form of triage, determining how soon a doctor will see you. From Canada, we get the concept of “re-importation,” where we get to pay Canadian prices for drugs – never mind the fact that the only reason we in the States pay so much is because the rest of the planet puts price caps on those drugs. With nothing going into the researchers’ coffers, how long do you expect Big Pharm to stay in business without killing off their R&D departments?
I’ll point out that those with money and influence, worldwide, often come to the United States for their treatment when their homeland medical systems fail – but with the examples above of our nearest “competitors” in the medical field, it might not be necessary.
But in the end, even if other nations somehow delivered human immortality for free in their hospitals – So what? I don’t see any reason, as a nation, to do what’s best for some other nation (which, incidentally, it isn’t – check their own entitlement programs and how rapidly the “Class of ’68ers” are drowning in their own red ink – the only question now is who will be the first to slide under the waves, despite the declining service standards). As the American government, I expect Congress and the Administration to do what’s best for America, near- and long-term. Creating massive new entitlement programs does neither. In the end, you get something like Oregon, where the State refuses to pay for lifesaving treatments – but will gladly pay for a suicide pill. “First do no harm” indeed!
You want to fix health care, dropping the price of it and keeping the same high quality of service? Increase the number of doctors in the US. This is something I can actually see spending Federal money on, sending newly-minted doctors to rural areas, the military, and other areas where there might be a shortage of medical care. WE ALREADY DO THIS – the program needs to be expanded. We need to tell the rest of the world to go hang, develop their own, or start paying up when it comes to drugs. No production, no prosperity. That works in sub-fields as well as nationwide economies. We need to tell the ambulance chasers to take a long walk off a short cliff, and reform the malpractice racket. The single biggest (and best) change would be to eliminate the insulating effects of insurance on the market for small things, like regular checkups and “minor” treatments that a basic EMT or nurse-practitioner could do. Same goes for all forms of truly discretionary medicine. Simply waving the big stick of the Treasury printing press at the problem and demanding “tides, recede!” at the waves of red ink is no way to overcome the laws of supply and demand. Keep insurance handy for heavy, vital treatments and sudden, life-threatening emergencies (appendicitis, wounds, etc). For the maintenance-of-life and general health concerns, I think we’re capable of taking care of that on our own.
That you don’t recognize your own policies as giving us the dictatorship-of-the-masses endgame does not surprise me at this point; that you expect the rest of us to go along with it singing songs of praise and thanksgiving to Congress for relieving us of the “heavy” burdens of a free life, does. Unlike you and Congress however, I trust my fellow Americans. We did pretty well left to our own devices, and we can do so again as soon as you get your mitts out of our daily lives.
All I can contribute is this.
While Jim wants to help every American, I think a majority of us are only concerned with the producers. The non-producing segment of our population that CHOOSES not to be productive is sub-human trash and we can’t be wasting our dollars on them.
Jim: What page of the Senate bill is the provision granting Americans a sense of personal responsibility? Right. I didn’t think there was one. So the old problems will be here to stay along with the new ones.
Personally, if this passes, I just can’t wait to start up a travel agency. I could become the face of American medical tourism. Even if Congress were to make it illegal, I could just pay my way into becoming a citizen of the Russian Federation and continue to run my company through the internet.
The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. Do you really think you should be able to opt out of paying for schools? The military? The fire department?
The problem with your response is it also proves too much. Do you really think health insurance is comparable to those other things?
Jim, you really and truly are nothing but a shill. You exercise no critical thinking toward Obama and the Democrats and your every comment on any topic pertaining to them is nothing more than a defense of their talking points.
Wow, Jim is definitely the King in building illogical arguments based on false facts. First, I can opt out of libraries and fire departments. The only way to argue otherwise, is to argue we pay for the library of congress and the Capitols fire protection. Libraries and fire protection are local concerns. Comparing a mandate that people turn over all their healthcare to the regulation of a federal bureaucracy is not the same as a small town agreeing to the mutual benefit of establishing a volunteer fire department or standing fire protection. And many library collections are built on private donations, not government mandate.
Finally, Democrats and bed pals like Jim can claim the benefits to 12 million Americans, but the 300 million other Americans are learning they are being harmed. And continuing to make up bad lies to justify fascist behaviour is not building political support. The new approach of overt bribes is just pushing people to a new level of anger. No wonder DHS is more concerned about angry Americans than angry Muslims.
First of all, the bills only cover what plans will be available in the exchanges — if you’re getting coverage through an employer, for example, those rules don’t apply.
BS.
Second, the Senate bill has exchange plans with actuarial value ranging from 60 to 90% (they go 70 to 95% in the House bill), so there will be a wide range of premiums and benefits.
BS, again. The range wil be less than what the current market provides, otherwise thay can’t extend coverage to those currently off the books. Econ 101.
Add those together, and I’m going to end up with a policy, employer provided or not, that will cost more than I’m paying now. Period. In part because it will probably cover aromatherapy, biorythm analysis, and astrological consulting. And my historectomy will be covered too.
Maybe the number of people without adequate health insurance will increase, not decrease.
There are people who spend their lives researching questions like this; they disagree with you. For example, look at Massachusetts, which enacted a health reform plan that is very similar to the bills before Congress: they now have the lowest rate of uninsured residents of any state in the union.
The rate of uninsured has little to no correlation to the rate of underinsured or adequately insured, Jim. In fact, Massachussetts is constantly raised as a pretty good litmus test of how the failed government-mandated health insurance programs of Canadia and Europe would fare in the United States. The answer? Still just as bad of a failure.
Citing a failed program as a success is a new form of logical fallacy from you. Congrats.
Again, there are people who know something about these things, and their forecast is that everyone else’s premiums will be slightly lower than before.
Sure, my premiums will be lower, but so will my net paycheck, when my taxes go through the roof to pay for this boondoggle. In fact, LOWER premiums of are LESS appeal to me than HIGHER premiums, because, at least for now, I can opt out of paying a higher healthcare premium if I want to increase my net pay. Once that healthcare premium gets converted to a compulsory fee (tax), I no longer have a satisfactorily legal option for foregoing healthcare premiums to increase my overall net pay if I choose to do so.
And my historectomy will be covered too.
“We make this promise to you now — if you like your uterus, you can keep it!”
Historectomy: The process of removing the organ that allows H. Sap. to learn from history. See “Jim” for contra-indications and side effects.
Not to be confused with Hysterectomy.
The problem with your response is it also proves too much. Do you really think health insurance is comparable to those other things?
So you agree that society has the right to compel its members to contribute to some common purposes, and we’re only haggling about which ones. That’s a step forward.
Sure, my premiums will be lower, but so will my net paycheck, when my taxes go through the roof to pay for this boondoggle.
No, it won’t be funded by an increase in your taxes (unless the excise tax on “Cadillac” health plans remains, and you’re in the small minority affected by that). Read up on how the bills are actually funded.
Add those together, and I’m going to end up with a policy, employer provided or not, that will cost more than I’m paying now. Period. In part because it will probably cover aromatherapy, biorythm analysis, and astrological consulting. And my historectomy will be covered too.
None of those things are in either bill — you’re arguing against a figment of your imagination.
The rate of uninsured has little to no correlation to the rate of underinsured or adequately insured, Jim.
So half the people in this thread are arguing that health reform will force them to buy more/better health insurance than they want, and you’re arguing that bills don’t require that insurance coverage be extensive enough? You guys should fight that out and get back to me when you’ve decided which way you want to argue.
I suppose it’s a sign of the general ignorance about the health care system and the reform bills that people will simultaneously raise mutually-exclusive objections.
Not true.
Feel free to set me straight — where does it say that employer-provided plans will have to be expensive HMO/PPO plans?
Feel free to set me straight
Sure. I take it you still haven’t read the bill. Section 102 in the House bill only grandfathers in existing plans for a period of 5 years or until the plan changes. Otherwise all new policies must conform to the Exchange. It does not matter if you get your coverage through your employer or if you purchase it on your own as you previous asserted.
(Note that a plan changes whenever it enrolls 1 new person or changes terms or rates. IOW, everyday events. So a small business might weather that one, but any firm with any turnover must change right away.)
Read up on how the bills are actually funded.
Despite the ensuing pie-fight behind locked doors to decide who’s going to pay on the front end, they’re fully-backed by the printing press. If and only if they rake in more tax revenues to cover the subsidies, then what you say is true. If, on the other hand, they go over-budget, it just adds to the deficit and thus, more taxes. I leave it to the reader to decide which outcome is more likely. The CBO 10-year projections are misleading because the revenues begin immediately whereas the expenses do not.
The CBO 10-year projections are misleading because the revenues begin immediately whereas the expenses do not.
So instead look at the 20 year projection; the Senate bill reduces the deficit much more in the second decade.
Titus corrected me:
Section 102 in the House bill only grandfathers in existing plans for a period of 5 years
Thank you for that pointer; I stand corrected. Under the House bill, after five years, all health plans would have to:
Create an essential benefits package that provides a comprehensive set of services, covers 70% of the actuarial value of the covered benefits, limits annual cost-sharing to $5,000/individual and $10,000/family, does not require cost-sharing for preventive services, and does not impose annual or lifetime limits on coverage.
That said, I’m pretty sure that all of the dozens of plans I considered in December (including the high-deductible HSA plan I chose) would have no trouble meeting this standard. This sets a floor, but does not make health insurance “one size fits all”.
I wonder why anyone thinks passing this bill is going to be better than not? I don’t really mind that the Democrat party has a death wish, I just wish they wouldn’t involve the rest of us in their suicide.
Hubris regularly brings down politicians and political parties. What’s odd to me is how much further the Democrats have been willing to go than even the Republicans did when they were in control. I think the problem is that they think people turned on the GOP because of some permanent lurch leftward, which is totally delusional.
I wonder why anyone thinks passing this bill is going to be better than not?
It will be better for the 12 million people who were discriminated against by insurance companies because of pre-existing conditions over the last three years. It will be better for the 30 million people who will now have coverage. It will be better for the tens of thousands (estimates vary) of people who die every year due to their lack of health insurance. It will be better for millions of low-income families who will be able to afford insurance and will be protected from medical bankruptcy.
Either of the bills being considered will do a great deal of good for millions of Americans.
Ironically, the GOP loss of support in 2004-2008 was at least as much because of disappointment from the “right” as the “left”. The pro-islamist and civil liberties factions on the left were appalled by Bush and the fiscal conservative/limited government factions on the right were appalled by Bush and even more appalled by the prospect of McCain.
Now the Dems are in a similar squeeze; they’ve taken fiscal irresponsibility to new depths, realpolitik constraints have limited their ability to appease the pro-islamist and civil liberties “left”, and the fact that partisanship and backroom dealing have at the very least not gotten any better with Obama’s election and that government reach in to the private economy is being attempted far beyond campaign rhetoric are annoying whole new sectors of the electorate.
Either of the bills being considered will do a great deal of good for millions of Americans.
Hmmm. If it’s such a fantastic deal, why are people compelled to participate at the point of a gun? Which is what a government mandate is.
It will be better for the 12 million people…pie in sky et cetera.
Not so. All you can say is that it is supposed to be better — this is the intention of the bill. But how many very complex changes work out exactly the way you intended them? Even in your own life: you invest in this opportunity because it will pay well — but it doesn’t, oops. At work you volunteer for that task because people will see you in a particular positive light, with good consequences, but, alas, that’s not actually what happens.
So maybe 12 million people who’ve had cancer will now be able to buy insurance. Yay! Or, on the other hand, maybe there was damn good reason why they couldn’t, and by trying to force water to flow uphill you’ll just create more mayhem — maybe institutions will find some other way not to make that contract, and in the process dump a lot of contracts they would previously have made. Maybe the number of people without adequate health insurance will increase, not decrease. You hope not. You intend not. But you’re in no position at all to reliably predict not, and especially not when you’ve got a hastily crafted sprawling crufty Frankenstein monster of a bill that has been slammed through without much public debate on its details and with a whole slew of weird politically-driven exceptions and mandates and carve-outs.
It will be better for the 12 million people who were discriminated against by insurance companies because of pre-existing conditions over the last three years.
It will be worse for the 300+ million people who weren’t discriminated against by insurance companies, precisely because they’ll be paying for people who have pre-existing conditions.
It will be better for the 30 million people who will now have coverage.
These are in addition to those 12 million above, right? No coverage and no reasons not to get coverage, means they didn’t want to pay for it. In other words, self-insured by choice. What’s the mechanism by which these guys actually get coverage?
I just see a subsidy combined with a tax penalty in the Senate Bill, if the self-insured don’t play ball. They might even have to pay more after subsidy in the Brave New World of the Senate Bill (after all the various changes in either bill are either going to result in much higher insurance premiums, insurance companies leaving markets, or bankrupt firms). As Carl says, we might see more uninsured after than before. The House bill at least had the public option where you can choose to mooch off the public dime for your health care needs.
So Jim, it’s fine according to you to have a sick person approach a private company, backed up by a government pointing a gun, and say: “I’m sick, and you have to pay for it.”
Why limit it to insurance companies? Why not just have the sick people go to any company that still has some money left? And why limit it to companies at all. Why don’t we all have them come to your door, and demand that you pay? Until you run out of money, that is. And why even involve the government? Just let the sick person have the gun, and cut out the middle man.
Obviously, when the government steals from one group of people and gives to another, it’s good for the recipients of the stolen goods. That doesn’t make it good for the nation. Paul doesn’t complain when Peter is robbed.
Having said all of that, my personal experience is quiet the opposite. My wife has had a long-standing heart condition which a dozen different cardiologists simply blew off for years. Then she began to deteriorate to the point where they actually had to read the echocardiograms, etc., and admit that if she didn’t have surgery within six months, she’d die.
Being self-employed and without adequate insurance at the time, I sought a job with anyone whose insurance company didn’t exclude pre-existing conditions, got offers from two such places, took one, and my wife had $100,000 worth of heart surgery for which we paid only $1,500. She’s alive and better than ever today because of the existing system.
The insurer is Blue Cross/Blue Shield. It’s not out of reach of anyone as far as I know. If you’re a federal employee (one of my job offers was from the USG), you can get it. You just have to look.
Jim does not have a clue–and that is is clear from all of his previous comments–as VDH has said the Utopian Luddite dream of the left is a thing of wistfulness, not reality.
Because the bills in Congress destroy the insurance marketplace and replace it with a system of cross-subsidization. No one can be allowed to leave the system. Participation must be mandatory otherwise those providing the subsidies will quit (because their policies will not be worth more than what they pay for them — the present-day situation) and the system will collapse.
However, there’s not nearly enough teeth in either bill, so likely they will collapse even if the eventual contents of the box matches the label. The Feds will then need to shore it up with more debt and the existing problems will get kicked down the road into future generations per usual.
(Hmm, upon second glance, my parenthetical element above is ambiguous. I of course mean that present-day policies are worth more than their cost.)
Either of the bills being considered will
do a great deal of good forre-deal millions of Americans’ goods.FIFY there, Jim.
The only ways out I’ve seen so far are to form your own union or become Amish. How do we form a paper union? And (*&(*& I wish Heinlein had built a competing religion to Hubbard’s.
If it’s such a fantastic deal, why are people compelled to participate at the point of a gun?
To avoid self-selection.
My town has a great public library, and everyone who owns property in my town is compelled (at the point of a gun, as you put it) to participate in supporting in. For what we pay, it’s a fantastic deal. But if we let townspeople opt out of supporting the library, surely some who don’t use it would do so (perhaps thinking that they could opt back in should they want to use the library sometime in the future). That would raise the cost of participation for everyone else, such that people who use it once or twice a year would decide that it wasn’t worth it to them, so the participation rate would fall further, and the costs to those remaining would rise some more. The cycle could go on until you had so few participants that the cost would be outrageous, and the library would need to be scaled down or closed, and everyone in our town who might ever have benefitted from the presence of an excellent library would be worse off.
Maybe the number of people without adequate health insurance will increase, not decrease.
There are people who spend their lives researching questions like this; they disagree with you. For example, look at Massachusetts, which enacted a health reform plan that is very similar to the bills before Congress: they now have the lowest rate of uninsured residents of any state in the union.
It will be worse for the 300+ million people who weren’t discriminated against by insurance companies, precisely because they’ll be paying for people who have pre-existing conditions.
Again, there are people who know something about these things, and their forecast is that everyone else’s premiums will be slightly lower than before.
The House bill at least had the public option where you can choose to mooch off the public dime for your health care needs.
The public option does not spend any public dimes — you would pay premiums, just like with private insurance.
Jim, if I want to self-select myself out of this program because I am convinced it will be a boondoggle of historic proportions, who the HELL are you to tell me I can’t?
If I want a library, I put my money (indeed, a fair chunk of money you’re now telling me I MUST put to health care) into buying books and other media. If I cannot afford a medical procedure to save my life, I negotiate a scheme of payment with the medical professionals. If the procedure is not going to save my life, then I damned well do without!
I think I know better than you do how I should spend my own money. To tell me otherwise is to arrogate to yourself a position in my life that none save parents (and maybe God) should ever have. THAT is why more Americans are turning against this steaming heap by the day – if I wanted Lord Jim in charge of my health and well being, I’d notify you in writing and set it up with a legal contract. Short of that – BUTT OUT!
This is because your library does not criminalize bookstores or Amazon.com. If everyone was forced to use them the way the government will force everyone to use their one-size-fits-all insurance, the situation would be much less rosy.
I sought a job with anyone whose insurance company didn’t exclude pre-existing conditions, got offers from two such places, took one, and my wife had $100,000 worth of heart surgery for which we paid only $1,500. She’s alive and better than ever today because of the existing system.
She’s alive and better because the existing system includes a law that bars employer-provided group health insurance plans from discriminating on the basis of pre-existing conditions. The health bills before Congress would extend that regulation to the individual health insurance market, so that people in your situation would not be required to have or get a job with health benefits in order to get care for themselves or their families.
I’m glad that government regulations helped you and your wife, but it seems like a strange reason to oppose extending the same help to people who aren’t fortunate enough to have a job like yours.
Jim, if I want to self-select myself out of this program because I am convinced it will be a boondoggle of historic proportions, who the HELL are you to tell me I can’t?
The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. Do you really think you should be able to opt out of paying for schools? The military? The fire department?
This is because your library does not criminalize bookstores or Amazon.com. If everyone was forced to use them the way the government will force everyone to use their one-size-fits-all insurance, the situation would be much less rosy.
The bills before Congress do not criminalize private health insurance — the Senate bill does not allow for anything but private insurance. There are regulations, just as there are today, but that hardly means that plans will be “one-size-fits-all.” In December I went through the annual ritual of renewing my family’s coverage, and that for my employees, and I considered dozens of plans, with dizzying distinctions in coverage networks, deductibles, copays, coinsurance, out-of-pocket limits, etc. All of them will be legal under the bills being considered.
There would be some advantages to having fewer choices, but health reform isn’t going to give me that.
Read the bill. Only expensive HMO/PPO type plans will be available. I assume these are the plans you were shopping for, right?
It will give me fewer choices, and I don’t have your millions to fall back on.
As I understand it, my plan would not be legal under the bills currently being considered. I have a high deductible catastrophic insurance plan, with an HSA. This is true insurance, rather than hiring an administrator to collect money from me to cover my future medical needs interest free (and tell me how I can spend it in the bargain) with an insurance plan tied in for the truly catastrophic needs insurance is supposed to be for.
But I’d have to pay a lot more money for less flexible coverage under the Pelosi/Reid/Obama plans.
That is correct.
The irony here is that your situation has the greatest actuarial value of all, even compared against pre-paid plans. But no soup for you!
Jim is the gift that keeps giving. First, he argues that he has a great library because everyone is forced to pay for it. Well guess what. That makes it not so great.
Then he goes on to cite the CBO as an expert on the costs of health care. I guess I need to remind Jim that CBO has to base those studies on assumptions as directed by Congress. If one of the assumptions is that the Moon is made of green cheese, then they have to use that assumption. If one of the assumptions is that the health care changes save money and cut the budget (which probably was the case with this particular study), well they have to include those assumptions. The only times I even partially believe the CBO is when they come up with results that are contrary to the convenience of Congress. In other words, the CBO has no credibility.
The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. Do you really think you should be able to opt out of paying for schools? The military? The fire department?
I can see an argument for not being able to opt out of the military. Perhaps even the fire department, if the destruction of your property doesn’t threaten other people who are covered by the fire department. But sure, being able to opt out of paying for terrible public schools sounds like a good idea. I probably would change my mind if school vouchers became the standard way to pay for school, because then you’d be paying for the education of the next generation, which has significant value to me, not merely supporting another wasteful bureaucracy.
Paying for subsidized health insurance even for the people who shouldn’t have it (that is, have “preexisting conditions”) has none of those benefits.
But sure, being able to opt out of paying for terrible public schools sounds like a good idea.
That’d be equivalent to only charging people who send a kid to school (who else would volunteer to pay?), and make primary and secondary education a totally private matter, with all costs borne by the parents. Universal public education — paid for by the entire society, not just those currently enrolled — is one of the great advances of the last couple centuries, and we consider any country without it to be unfortunate and backward.
You’d throw it away?
Only expensive HMO/PPO type plans will be available.
First of all, the bills only cover what plans will be available in the exchanges — if you’re getting coverage through an employer, for example, those rules don’t apply.
Second, the Senate bill has exchange plans with actuarial value ranging from 60 to 90% (they go 70 to 95% in the House bill), so there will be a wide range of premiums and benefits. The Senate bill includes a catastrophic, high-deductible option for young people.
I send my kids to Catholic school. It costs me about $4k a year per kid, but that doesn’t cover the whole cost. Some of the cost is picked up by the local parish, some by the dioceses. (Organizations volunteering to pay.) Some of the students at the school who’s parents can’t afford the tuition are on full scholarships paid for by school alums anonymously. (Individuals volunteering to pay.)
Costs in public education are out of control just like with health care for the same reason, the consumers of the product aren’t the ones paying the cost. The budget at my kids school is gone over in incredible detail every year and the costs are kept down, because it’s our money being spent.
Yep.
That’d be equivalent to only charging people who send a kid to school (who else would volunteer to pay?), and make primary and secondary education a totally private matter, with all costs borne by the parents. Universal public education — paid for by the entire society, not just those currently enrolled — is one of the great advances of the last couple centuries, and we consider any country without it to be unfortunate and backward.
You’d throw it away?
Throw what away again? Universal public education only works if it’s education. Once you drop that part as has happened in some parts of the US, then it’s just a babysitting job for people who could be working instead.
Not true.
Jim, just because the state has mandated some forms of funding, does not mean it has the right to dip into our wallets for every new shiny toy it wants this week. The Soviets, among others, tried that, and failed. It did not fail because it was an oppressive police state (it outlasted Stalin with nearly 40 years to go), it failed because it could not keep up with the West financially, paying foreigners for its bread and using what production it had to try to match our current-generation weapons. The reason the collapse took everyone in the West by surprise was because we had access to the Politburo’s bank books, and the plant managers were lying to their own superiors about making quotas, all the way up the chain to Moscow. Nobody had much incentive to produce, because nobody could keep their contribution to an increase in GNP. Remember the old joke? “We will pretend to work while they pretend to pay us.” Nobody had any reason to produce anything past the absolute minimum – which they still managed to underachieve! – and so nobody did. This leads to equal distribution of all that the state has to offer. Equal shares of misery for all! Again, thank you, but I’ll pass.
The point of government is not to do for us what is simply inconvenient; it is to do for us what we are physically incapable of. If you want to add those millions of (largely phantom) uninsured citizens to the rolls of Medicare/Medicaid (47 million? 30 million? Pick a number with something solid backing it up already!), then fine. That’s what it’s there for, to cover those individuals who are physically incapable of saving for medical coverage. To axe those very rolls, and roll the money for that least-worst program into some fantastic new program (designed, built, and operated by the same people that gave us Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, the Walter Reed scandals, etc ad nauseum) that will replace what 80+% of us are quite happy with, is pure hubris, on their parts and on yours.
Don’t get me started about using this health-care debate as a stalking horse to give amnesty to millions currently here illegally. I got nothing for them. Flat nothing. Let their own governments foot their medical bills here, if their universal health care coverage is so fantastic. I’ve worked for years with foreign nationals, and with those who desired US citizenship. Some have been fortunate enough to gain it, after years, even decades of fighting incompetent bureaucrats at INS. The whole process needs fixing, I won’t even debate that point – but simply allowing millions who are here illegally to jump the line while thousands with technical skills, legally here on academic visas and the like, get the boot is not the way to do it, with any kind of short- or long-term benefits to the nation as a whole. But I digress. Back to the national health insurance scheme.
“But other nations do it!” you cry.
OK, let’s look at those other nations. I won’t be linking their own news sources; I assume you’re not in China and that Google will take you to them. Primary English-language sources are the Telegraph, the Sunday Daily Mail, and the Times of London. Secondary sources include the Guardian and BBC – though for some reason they don’t report on the fiscal malfeasance of nuLab, and the effectively-bankrupt nature of Her Majesty’s Government, nearly so much as the others. Nor the dirty hospitals, the deaths in the halls from negligence that here in the States would be considered criminal, etc.
From Britain, we see that anyone expecting emergency care (or to avoid a staph infection in the grotty hallways of NHS hospitals) gets to pay for private insurance on top of their state-mandated coverage. A months-long wait for an X-ray of a broken arm is not unheard of from anecdotal data. From Japan, we have American expats delivering the advice “Don’t get sick in Japan, and avoid needing to deliver a baby after 5 pm” due to the hospitals being run like an 8-hour office. Self-diagnosis is also common, as is a system of privately-owned hospitals that allow various forms of nepotism to serve as a form of triage, determining how soon a doctor will see you. From Canada, we get the concept of “re-importation,” where we get to pay Canadian prices for drugs – never mind the fact that the only reason we in the States pay so much is because the rest of the planet puts price caps on those drugs. With nothing going into the researchers’ coffers, how long do you expect Big Pharm to stay in business without killing off their R&D departments?
I’ll point out that those with money and influence, worldwide, often come to the United States for their treatment when their homeland medical systems fail – but with the examples above of our nearest “competitors” in the medical field, it might not be necessary.
But in the end, even if other nations somehow delivered human immortality for free in their hospitals – So what? I don’t see any reason, as a nation, to do what’s best for some other nation (which, incidentally, it isn’t – check their own entitlement programs and how rapidly the “Class of ’68ers” are drowning in their own red ink – the only question now is who will be the first to slide under the waves, despite the declining service standards). As the American government, I expect Congress and the Administration to do what’s best for America, near- and long-term. Creating massive new entitlement programs does neither. In the end, you get something like Oregon, where the State refuses to pay for lifesaving treatments – but will gladly pay for a suicide pill. “First do no harm” indeed!
You want to fix health care, dropping the price of it and keeping the same high quality of service? Increase the number of doctors in the US. This is something I can actually see spending Federal money on, sending newly-minted doctors to rural areas, the military, and other areas where there might be a shortage of medical care. WE ALREADY DO THIS – the program needs to be expanded. We need to tell the rest of the world to go hang, develop their own, or start paying up when it comes to drugs. No production, no prosperity. That works in sub-fields as well as nationwide economies. We need to tell the ambulance chasers to take a long walk off a short cliff, and reform the malpractice racket. The single biggest (and best) change would be to eliminate the insulating effects of insurance on the market for small things, like regular checkups and “minor” treatments that a basic EMT or nurse-practitioner could do. Same goes for all forms of truly discretionary medicine. Simply waving the big stick of the Treasury printing press at the problem and demanding “tides, recede!” at the waves of red ink is no way to overcome the laws of supply and demand. Keep insurance handy for heavy, vital treatments and sudden, life-threatening emergencies (appendicitis, wounds, etc). For the maintenance-of-life and general health concerns, I think we’re capable of taking care of that on our own.
That you don’t recognize your own policies as giving us the dictatorship-of-the-masses endgame does not surprise me at this point; that you expect the rest of us to go along with it singing songs of praise and thanksgiving to Congress for relieving us of the “heavy” burdens of a free life, does. Unlike you and Congress however, I trust my fellow Americans. We did pretty well left to our own devices, and we can do so again as soon as you get your mitts out of our daily lives.
All I can contribute is this.
While Jim wants to help every American, I think a majority of us are only concerned with the producers. The non-producing segment of our population that CHOOSES not to be productive is sub-human trash and we can’t be wasting our dollars on them.
Jim: What page of the Senate bill is the provision granting Americans a sense of personal responsibility? Right. I didn’t think there was one. So the old problems will be here to stay along with the new ones.
Personally, if this passes, I just can’t wait to start up a travel agency. I could become the face of American medical tourism. Even if Congress were to make it illegal, I could just pay my way into becoming a citizen of the Russian Federation and continue to run my company through the internet.
The problem with your response is it also proves too much. Do you really think health insurance is comparable to those other things?
Jim, you really and truly are nothing but a shill. You exercise no critical thinking toward Obama and the Democrats and your every comment on any topic pertaining to them is nothing more than a defense of their talking points.
Wow, Jim is definitely the King in building illogical arguments based on false facts. First, I can opt out of libraries and fire departments. The only way to argue otherwise, is to argue we pay for the library of congress and the Capitols fire protection. Libraries and fire protection are local concerns. Comparing a mandate that people turn over all their healthcare to the regulation of a federal bureaucracy is not the same as a small town agreeing to the mutual benefit of establishing a volunteer fire department or standing fire protection. And many library collections are built on private donations, not government mandate.
Finally, Democrats and bed pals like Jim can claim the benefits to 12 million Americans, but the 300 million other Americans are learning they are being harmed. And continuing to make up bad lies to justify fascist behaviour is not building political support. The new approach of overt bribes is just pushing people to a new level of anger. No wonder DHS is more concerned about angry Americans than angry Muslims.
BS.
BS, again. The range wil be less than what the current market provides, otherwise thay can’t extend coverage to those currently off the books. Econ 101.
Add those together, and I’m going to end up with a policy, employer provided or not, that will cost more than I’m paying now. Period. In part because it will probably cover aromatherapy, biorythm analysis, and astrological consulting. And my historectomy will be covered too.
Maybe the number of people without adequate health insurance will increase, not decrease.
There are people who spend their lives researching questions like this; they disagree with you. For example, look at Massachusetts, which enacted a health reform plan that is very similar to the bills before Congress: they now have the lowest rate of uninsured residents of any state in the union.
The rate of uninsured has little to no correlation to the rate of underinsured or adequately insured, Jim. In fact, Massachussetts is constantly raised as a pretty good litmus test of how the failed government-mandated health insurance programs of Canadia and Europe would fare in the United States. The answer? Still just as bad of a failure.
Citing a failed program as a success is a new form of logical fallacy from you. Congrats.
Again, there are people who know something about these things, and their forecast is that everyone else’s premiums will be slightly lower than before.
Sure, my premiums will be lower, but so will my net paycheck, when my taxes go through the roof to pay for this boondoggle. In fact, LOWER premiums of are LESS appeal to me than HIGHER premiums, because, at least for now, I can opt out of paying a higher healthcare premium if I want to increase my net pay. Once that healthcare premium gets converted to a compulsory fee (tax), I no longer have a satisfactorily legal option for foregoing healthcare premiums to increase my overall net pay if I choose to do so.
“We make this promise to you now — if you like your uterus, you can keep it!”
Historectomy: The process of removing the organ that allows H. Sap. to learn from history. See “Jim” for contra-indications and side effects.
Not to be confused with Hysterectomy.
The problem with your response is it also proves too much. Do you really think health insurance is comparable to those other things?
So you agree that society has the right to compel its members to contribute to some common purposes, and we’re only haggling about which ones. That’s a step forward.
Sure, my premiums will be lower, but so will my net paycheck, when my taxes go through the roof to pay for this boondoggle.
No, it won’t be funded by an increase in your taxes (unless the excise tax on “Cadillac” health plans remains, and you’re in the small minority affected by that). Read up on how the bills are actually funded.
Add those together, and I’m going to end up with a policy, employer provided or not, that will cost more than I’m paying now. Period. In part because it will probably cover aromatherapy, biorythm analysis, and astrological consulting. And my historectomy will be covered too.
None of those things are in either bill — you’re arguing against a figment of your imagination.
The rate of uninsured has little to no correlation to the rate of underinsured or adequately insured, Jim.
So half the people in this thread are arguing that health reform will force them to buy more/better health insurance than they want, and you’re arguing that bills don’t require that insurance coverage be extensive enough? You guys should fight that out and get back to me when you’ve decided which way you want to argue.
I suppose it’s a sign of the general ignorance about the health care system and the reform bills that people will simultaneously raise mutually-exclusive objections.
Not true.
Feel free to set me straight — where does it say that employer-provided plans will have to be expensive HMO/PPO plans?
Sure. I take it you still haven’t read the bill. Section 102 in the House bill only grandfathers in existing plans for a period of 5 years or until the plan changes. Otherwise all new policies must conform to the Exchange. It does not matter if you get your coverage through your employer or if you purchase it on your own as you previous asserted.
(Note that a plan changes whenever it enrolls 1 new person or changes terms or rates. IOW, everyday events. So a small business might weather that one, but any firm with any turnover must change right away.)
Despite the ensuing pie-fight behind locked doors to decide who’s going to pay on the front end, they’re fully-backed by the printing press. If and only if they rake in more tax revenues to cover the subsidies, then what you say is true. If, on the other hand, they go over-budget, it just adds to the deficit and thus, more taxes. I leave it to the reader to decide which outcome is more likely. The CBO 10-year projections are misleading because the revenues begin immediately whereas the expenses do not.
The CBO 10-year projections are misleading because the revenues begin immediately whereas the expenses do not.
So instead look at the 20 year projection; the Senate bill reduces the deficit much more in the second decade.
Titus corrected me:
Section 102 in the House bill only grandfathers in existing plans for a period of 5 years
Thank you for that pointer; I stand corrected. Under the House bill, after five years, all health plans would have to:
That said, I’m pretty sure that all of the dozens of plans I considered in December (including the high-deductible HSA plan I chose) would have no trouble meeting this standard. This sets a floor, but does not make health insurance “one size fits all”.