First, the article linked to does nothing to address how to cover people who can’t afford insurance. Second, one of the article’s statements, namely that HSAs are not allowed, is flatly not true, as the author would know if he’d bothered to read the publication he writes for. Third, literally every other industrialized country covers both catastrophic and preventative care for a fraction of what the US pays.
“First, the article linked to does nothing to address how to cover people who can’t afford insurance.”
Obamacare helps poor people get insurance at the expense of raising everyone else’s taxes, insurance, and health care costs. What Obamacare doesn’t do is make health care something poor people can afford. In any case Obamacare wont even insure everyone, there will still be tens of millions without insurance.
“Second, one of the article’s statements, namely that HSAs are not allowed, is flatly not true, ”
Your link makes some good points about how “HSAs will survive Obamacare — at least for now” but the article ties a HSA to an insurance policy and they don’t need to be. What we have seen from Obama is a reduction in the amount of money you can contribute and changes in the tax status of these accounts, meaning you can put less in and your contributions now get taxed. He also reduced the items you can claim as a medical expense for your HSA.
From Rand’s link, ” Suppose someone today wished to buy an insurance plan that covered only serious illness and accidents…”
This article also links HSA’s to a health insurance policy. It never states HSA’s are not allowed, it says paring them with certain types of insurance is not allowed. Two things. First, these types of plans Obama explicitly says will not be allowed. He calls them bad apples, vaporplans, predatory, ect. You are essentially defending Obama by calling him a liar. Second, any plan that does not offer the mandated coverages, is illegal to sell. So, maybe you can have a high deductible plan but only if it also offers maternity care for men and other mandates.
“Third, literally every other industrialized country covers both catastrophic and preventative care for a fraction of what the US pays.”
Exactly right, increasing spending on insurance will not lead to lower health care costs. You realize you are saying, “We spend more than everyone else and get worse outcomes so we need to spend more!”?
“First, the article linked to does nothing to address how to cover people who can’t afford insurance. ”
Actually it plainly details how the suggested steps will make insurance far more affordable and therefore more people of lower incomes will be able to purchase it. It’s just that teat-sucking statists can’t see it; nor will they consider it because it doesn’t punish enough people.
Note that it includes steps that have been suggested by Conservatives for years even though Lefty statist thugs insist – to this day – that the Right has no suggestions.
There is no perfection, Gerrib, except for the stately reviews in parade of the Grand Fleet Admiral Gerrib Fleet of the Mind. So there are always going to be some people who cannot afford health insurance. But we have safety nets for those people.
Secondly the article never purported to be a total solution. It only purports to hugely improve the health insurance market. But whatever the solution is, the best one most certainly won’t be invented and administered by the Federal Government. So instead of sitting there with 7 pounds of lead in your brain, …if you want a solution to the problem why don’t you think one up? Why do you and the rest of the Statists insist that government do your thinking for you?
If you care *SO MUCH* about finding a solution to the problem of making insurance affordable to people who presently cannot afford it, then shut your mouth and start using your head and come up with something.
Because Obamacare isn’t it.
I just had a thought on the “oil change” problem. (The idea expressed in the article that true insurance doesn’t pay for routine maintenance.) Here’s the thought: If failure to change your oil could result in large liabilities to the auto insurer, you’d see either free oil changes in policies or mandatory oil changes.
I see something similar in commercial building policies. For example, we were required to retrofit a building with sprinklers as a condition of coverage. We have mandatory inspections by the insurance company, and they hand us punch lists of things to fix.
Routine checkups, vaccinations, scheduled tests – this are designed to lower health care costs to the insurer. It’s cheaper to treat diabetes before the patient is rushed to the hospital in a coma, and small cancers are much less expensive to deal with than big ones.
“Here’s the thought: If failure to change your oil could result in large liabilities to the auto insurer”
Just mandate that auto insurance cover repairs associated with blown head gaskets and such. Obamacare mandates that insurance cover outcomes of bad decisions on the part of the consumer. Hey, now that I am subsidizing your health care you better hit the treadmill. Stop eating those burgers and fries and if you only eat vegetable you better add some meat to your diet so I don’t have to pay for your malnutrition treatments.
Now that I think of it, the office chair you use can lead to back pain so you better go buy a new and approved one from this company that I am certainly not an investor in and did not lobby the HHS secretary to write regulations mandating their use.
“Routine checkups, vaccinations, scheduled tests – this are designed to lower health care costs to the insurer.”
Umm those things are usually covered by insurance anyway. That is another lie about our old system. Do you know anything about health insurance?
Routine checkups, vaccinations, scheduled tests – this are designed to lower health care costs to the insurer.
No, it doesn’t even make sense to claim that these activities are somehow “designed” for insurance companies.
And you need to “think” more. Check ups and tests are basically opportunities for the insurance company to spend money in order to find insurable problems to spend money on. It’s not in their interests to help you find reasons for them to lose money.
Finally, I think it’s silly for someone with little knowledge of the insurance industry to second-guess what’s best for insurance companies.
By that logic, your body is then no longer your own. Simply by signing up for insurance, you would be giving the company the power to dictate what you may and may not eat or do or wear, where you may or may not go, what job(s) you may or may not hold, etc.
That way lies madness – or abject servitude, which you seem to prefer.
No – the insurance company is free to not insure you if you don’t comply with their mandate, and you’re free to find a company that doesn’t care. Aren’t “freedom of association” and “freedom of contract” sacred to libertarians?
You used to be able to do that. Under Obamacare, plans that don’t offer you things like maternity coverage (for guys) are now illegal to sell. So you’re no longer free to find an insurance company that doesn’t care. Also, the above Forbes article was written back when everyone thought that if you liked your existing plan, you could actually keep it. As it turns out, that was a lie.
Maybe he is referring to Obama’s dictate?
Not a chance in hell that the free market will be allowed to work… case in point…
First, the article linked to does nothing to address how to cover people who can’t afford insurance.
This is what’s known as a separate issue. You Chris, are throwing mud in some crystal clear waters. So let’s put the article we’ve just read into a box and deal with your issue separately as it should be.
Two results need to happen to address your complaint. Insurance prices must go down and poor people must become richer.
So, if you understand the basis of insurance, why do you keep asking for prices go up with ridiculous unicorns farting perfume bubbles? That doesn’t make sense? Nor do any of your proposed solutions. What does actually bring prices down is real insurance in a free market (across state lines being the prime example from the article.)
So how to make people less poor? Starting as naked babies they all start poor. Parents may have money, but the baby doesn’t. There is a rumor that responsible parents don’t have babies they can’t afford.
A little side rant here… feed the children, pisses me off every time I see the commercials. Why? Because feeding the children causes the poverty. In nature, when there is not enough food, baby production goes down. But feed the children does just the opposite, encouraging more children to have children. Instead of feeding those children they should be taken away from those parents (after both have been sterilized.) Give the parents food to the children.
I care about the children. I don’t give a phuck about their parents or the institutions that feed off them.
/end rant
Most people are born relatively healthy. If not, again that’s a separate issue. Those healthy people will be educated and start with low paying jobs. It is their responsibility to make themselves worth more so they don’t remain in low paying jobs, but even the lowest paying job provides enough if they manage their money correctly. My sister pays hundreds of dollars a month for cigarettes. That’s a choice. She could pay for health insurance instead. For others it’s booze. Same answer. Especially since real health insurance doesn’t cost as much as cigarettes and booze (unless the government does it.)
How do we help those that can’t make it. The way we have always done it. Family. Church. Etc.
Growing up means taking responsibility. This generation would rather have nanny take care of them.
Your pissing and moaning and whining Chris, is not an argument.
Ken Anthony – Alas, America is not Lake Wobegon, and so some people will be below average, in either health or wealth. Pointing out that we need some way to deal with them other then to tell them not to be born is not a separate issue. It is, in fact, the whole reason we went down the Obamacare path.
Why exactly would allowing insurance sales across state lines magically reduce prices? Georgia tried this, and got no savings at all.
“It is, in fact, the whole reason we went down the Obamacare path.”
If that was indeed the reason, there are a number of things that could have been done without jacking up everyone else’s health care and health insurance.
We are told by Democrats that the number of people losing their doctors and current insurance or seeing higher premiums and deductibles are only a mere 5% and just a statistic but the number of uninsured was also a small number and was used to justify policies that do nothing to lower the costs of health care. Sure, giving people other people’s money, after it goes through several layers of Democrat graft, will help poor people pay for insurance but why all the middle men and corruption? Why not just cut them a check instead of ruining the entire system?
Also, that 5% is just another lie. Wait until the employer mandate kicks in.
Chris, as someone who had their insurance cancelled, I invite you to participate in the individual market so you can see what your policies are doing. Ok, if you get your insurance through work it is now illegal to buy an individual plan but maybe call your senator or start a petition on change.org to have the employer mandate enacted instead of delayed. We should all be in this together.
some people will be below average, in either health or wealth
Chris, I’m one of them with regard to both, but you’re not offering any solution.
So explain to me how increasing health care costs helps the poor? Because that all your ‘solutions’ ever accomplish.
Poor people are not a class. The point I made and you missed is that everyone starts out poor. When they start out poor from poor parents that’s reprehensible. That’s a decision. A bad decision. We should be reducing those numbers, not encouraging them with stupid plans based on emotion and zero reason.
We have freaking seat belt laws but no law that says you must be financially responsible for your children. That’s insane. I had to prove my financial responsibility to marry a foreign wife. But a worthless bum can father children from a dozen woman and may only be held partially responsible if they can keep track of him.
When I say poor people are not a class it means what Thomas Sowell pointed out. Income is not wealth, it is a means of building wealth (along with many other parameters.) Life is a progression from poor to wealth if you work and plan for it (stability, not income, being the most important factor.)
I am the poor. I intend to build wealth. How? Sacrifice. I’m not healthy. You can bet your ass it pisses me off no end when I see young healthy people not being responsible for not just their lives but the poor kids they bring into this world. They not only take tax payers money but drag the responsible members of their family down with them.
Pointing out that we need some way to deal with them other then to tell them not to be born is not a separate issue.
BULL. F#CKING. SHIT.
It is a separate issue because it is a separate problem.
‘Some way to deal’ does not mean the non workable solution you propose. It’s mixing separate issues with things that do work in order the break things that do work that is the problem. People losing their health insurance might explain that to you. You now have millions qualified in that way to do so. But go ahead and ignore them. It is what you do best.
You don’t care enough to overcome stupidity. I hope one day somebody with a big enough clue bat makes that connection for you.
Breaking one sixth of the economy of the largest nation on earth is what mixing separate issues accomplishes.
…and Chris, if you can’t see that not being born is part of the solution…
Non born people (not aborted) have complete health care and nutrition. Tell me I’m wrong.
Chris, did you see Obama claim 100 million people got health insurance through the exchange? OK let’s assume Obama isn’t that stupid and it was just a gaffe and not an intentional lie but he did claim that people getting insurance through the exchange are doing so for the first time in their life and that is an outright lie. We don’t know how many people are getting insurance for the first time and how many are replacing policies that were cancelled.
Perhaps this was Obama’s strategy all along. Lie about people being able to keep their policies. Then when people get new policies claim this was a success and they are first time insurance buyers. Lie after lie after lie.
Oh, the kicker is Obama complained about people spreading misinformation again. Maybe he should keep his mouth shut.
First, the article linked to does nothing to address how to cover people who can’t afford insurance. Second, one of the article’s statements, namely that HSAs are not allowed, is flatly not true, as the author would know if he’d bothered to read the publication he writes for. Third, literally every other industrialized country covers both catastrophic and preventative care for a fraction of what the US pays.
“First, the article linked to does nothing to address how to cover people who can’t afford insurance.”
Obamacare helps poor people get insurance at the expense of raising everyone else’s taxes, insurance, and health care costs. What Obamacare doesn’t do is make health care something poor people can afford. In any case Obamacare wont even insure everyone, there will still be tens of millions without insurance.
“Second, one of the article’s statements, namely that HSAs are not allowed, is flatly not true, ”
Your link makes some good points about how “HSAs will survive Obamacare — at least for now” but the article ties a HSA to an insurance policy and they don’t need to be. What we have seen from Obama is a reduction in the amount of money you can contribute and changes in the tax status of these accounts, meaning you can put less in and your contributions now get taxed. He also reduced the items you can claim as a medical expense for your HSA.
From Rand’s link, ” Suppose someone today wished to buy an insurance plan that covered only serious illness and accidents…”
This article also links HSA’s to a health insurance policy. It never states HSA’s are not allowed, it says paring them with certain types of insurance is not allowed. Two things. First, these types of plans Obama explicitly says will not be allowed. He calls them bad apples, vaporplans, predatory, ect. You are essentially defending Obama by calling him a liar. Second, any plan that does not offer the mandated coverages, is illegal to sell. So, maybe you can have a high deductible plan but only if it also offers maternity care for men and other mandates.
“Third, literally every other industrialized country covers both catastrophic and preventative care for a fraction of what the US pays.”
Exactly right, increasing spending on insurance will not lead to lower health care costs. You realize you are saying, “We spend more than everyone else and get worse outcomes so we need to spend more!”?
“First, the article linked to does nothing to address how to cover people who can’t afford insurance. ”
Actually it plainly details how the suggested steps will make insurance far more affordable and therefore more people of lower incomes will be able to purchase it. It’s just that teat-sucking statists can’t see it; nor will they consider it because it doesn’t punish enough people.
Note that it includes steps that have been suggested by Conservatives for years even though Lefty statist thugs insist – to this day – that the Right has no suggestions.
There is no perfection, Gerrib, except for the stately reviews in parade of the Grand Fleet Admiral Gerrib Fleet of the Mind. So there are always going to be some people who cannot afford health insurance. But we have safety nets for those people.
Secondly the article never purported to be a total solution. It only purports to hugely improve the health insurance market. But whatever the solution is, the best one most certainly won’t be invented and administered by the Federal Government. So instead of sitting there with 7 pounds of lead in your brain, …if you want a solution to the problem why don’t you think one up? Why do you and the rest of the Statists insist that government do your thinking for you?
If you care *SO MUCH* about finding a solution to the problem of making insurance affordable to people who presently cannot afford it, then shut your mouth and start using your head and come up with something.
Because Obamacare isn’t it.
I just had a thought on the “oil change” problem. (The idea expressed in the article that true insurance doesn’t pay for routine maintenance.) Here’s the thought: If failure to change your oil could result in large liabilities to the auto insurer, you’d see either free oil changes in policies or mandatory oil changes.
I see something similar in commercial building policies. For example, we were required to retrofit a building with sprinklers as a condition of coverage. We have mandatory inspections by the insurance company, and they hand us punch lists of things to fix.
Routine checkups, vaccinations, scheduled tests – this are designed to lower health care costs to the insurer. It’s cheaper to treat diabetes before the patient is rushed to the hospital in a coma, and small cancers are much less expensive to deal with than big ones.
“Here’s the thought: If failure to change your oil could result in large liabilities to the auto insurer”
Just mandate that auto insurance cover repairs associated with blown head gaskets and such. Obamacare mandates that insurance cover outcomes of bad decisions on the part of the consumer. Hey, now that I am subsidizing your health care you better hit the treadmill. Stop eating those burgers and fries and if you only eat vegetable you better add some meat to your diet so I don’t have to pay for your malnutrition treatments.
Now that I think of it, the office chair you use can lead to back pain so you better go buy a new and approved one from this company that I am certainly not an investor in and did not lobby the HHS secretary to write regulations mandating their use.
“Routine checkups, vaccinations, scheduled tests – this are designed to lower health care costs to the insurer.”
Umm those things are usually covered by insurance anyway. That is another lie about our old system. Do you know anything about health insurance?
Routine checkups, vaccinations, scheduled tests – this are designed to lower health care costs to the insurer.
No, it doesn’t even make sense to claim that these activities are somehow “designed” for insurance companies.
And you need to “think” more. Check ups and tests are basically opportunities for the insurance company to spend money in order to find insurable problems to spend money on. It’s not in their interests to help you find reasons for them to lose money.
Finally, I think it’s silly for someone with little knowledge of the insurance industry to second-guess what’s best for insurance companies.
By that logic, your body is then no longer your own. Simply by signing up for insurance, you would be giving the company the power to dictate what you may and may not eat or do or wear, where you may or may not go, what job(s) you may or may not hold, etc.
That way lies madness – or abject servitude, which you seem to prefer.
No – the insurance company is free to not insure you if you don’t comply with their mandate, and you’re free to find a company that doesn’t care. Aren’t “freedom of association” and “freedom of contract” sacred to libertarians?
You used to be able to do that. Under Obamacare, plans that don’t offer you things like maternity coverage (for guys) are now illegal to sell. So you’re no longer free to find an insurance company that doesn’t care. Also, the above Forbes article was written back when everyone thought that if you liked your existing plan, you could actually keep it. As it turns out, that was a lie.
Maybe he is referring to Obama’s dictate?
Not a chance in hell that the free market will be allowed to work… case in point…
First, the article linked to does nothing to address how to cover people who can’t afford insurance.
This is what’s known as a separate issue. You Chris, are throwing mud in some crystal clear waters. So let’s put the article we’ve just read into a box and deal with your issue separately as it should be.
Two results need to happen to address your complaint. Insurance prices must go down and poor people must become richer.
So, if you understand the basis of insurance, why do you keep asking for prices go up with ridiculous unicorns farting perfume bubbles? That doesn’t make sense? Nor do any of your proposed solutions. What does actually bring prices down is real insurance in a free market (across state lines being the prime example from the article.)
So how to make people less poor? Starting as naked babies they all start poor. Parents may have money, but the baby doesn’t. There is a rumor that responsible parents don’t have babies they can’t afford.
A little side rant here… feed the children, pisses me off every time I see the commercials. Why? Because feeding the children causes the poverty. In nature, when there is not enough food, baby production goes down. But feed the children does just the opposite, encouraging more children to have children. Instead of feeding those children they should be taken away from those parents (after both have been sterilized.) Give the parents food to the children.
I care about the children. I don’t give a phuck about their parents or the institutions that feed off them.
/end rant
Most people are born relatively healthy. If not, again that’s a separate issue. Those healthy people will be educated and start with low paying jobs. It is their responsibility to make themselves worth more so they don’t remain in low paying jobs, but even the lowest paying job provides enough if they manage their money correctly. My sister pays hundreds of dollars a month for cigarettes. That’s a choice. She could pay for health insurance instead. For others it’s booze. Same answer. Especially since real health insurance doesn’t cost as much as cigarettes and booze (unless the government does it.)
How do we help those that can’t make it. The way we have always done it. Family. Church. Etc.
Growing up means taking responsibility. This generation would rather have nanny take care of them.
Your pissing and moaning and whining Chris, is not an argument.
Ken Anthony – Alas, America is not Lake Wobegon, and so some people will be below average, in either health or wealth. Pointing out that we need some way to deal with them other then to tell them not to be born is not a separate issue. It is, in fact, the whole reason we went down the Obamacare path.
Why exactly would allowing insurance sales across state lines magically reduce prices? Georgia tried this, and got no savings at all.
“It is, in fact, the whole reason we went down the Obamacare path.”
If that was indeed the reason, there are a number of things that could have been done without jacking up everyone else’s health care and health insurance.
We are told by Democrats that the number of people losing their doctors and current insurance or seeing higher premiums and deductibles are only a mere 5% and just a statistic but the number of uninsured was also a small number and was used to justify policies that do nothing to lower the costs of health care. Sure, giving people other people’s money, after it goes through several layers of Democrat graft, will help poor people pay for insurance but why all the middle men and corruption? Why not just cut them a check instead of ruining the entire system?
Also, that 5% is just another lie. Wait until the employer mandate kicks in.
Chris, as someone who had their insurance cancelled, I invite you to participate in the individual market so you can see what your policies are doing. Ok, if you get your insurance through work it is now illegal to buy an individual plan but maybe call your senator or start a petition on change.org to have the employer mandate enacted instead of delayed. We should all be in this together.
some people will be below average, in either health or wealth
Chris, I’m one of them with regard to both, but you’re not offering any solution.
So explain to me how increasing health care costs helps the poor? Because that all your ‘solutions’ ever accomplish.
Poor people are not a class. The point I made and you missed is that everyone starts out poor. When they start out poor from poor parents that’s reprehensible. That’s a decision. A bad decision. We should be reducing those numbers, not encouraging them with stupid plans based on emotion and zero reason.
We have freaking seat belt laws but no law that says you must be financially responsible for your children. That’s insane. I had to prove my financial responsibility to marry a foreign wife. But a worthless bum can father children from a dozen woman and may only be held partially responsible if they can keep track of him.
When I say poor people are not a class it means what Thomas Sowell pointed out. Income is not wealth, it is a means of building wealth (along with many other parameters.) Life is a progression from poor to wealth if you work and plan for it (stability, not income, being the most important factor.)
I am the poor. I intend to build wealth. How? Sacrifice. I’m not healthy. You can bet your ass it pisses me off no end when I see young healthy people not being responsible for not just their lives but the poor kids they bring into this world. They not only take tax payers money but drag the responsible members of their family down with them.
Pointing out that we need some way to deal with them other then to tell them not to be born is not a separate issue.
BULL. F#CKING. SHIT.
It is a separate issue because it is a separate problem.
‘Some way to deal’ does not mean the non workable solution you propose. It’s mixing separate issues with things that do work in order the break things that do work that is the problem. People losing their health insurance might explain that to you. You now have millions qualified in that way to do so. But go ahead and ignore them. It is what you do best.
You don’t care enough to overcome stupidity. I hope one day somebody with a big enough clue bat makes that connection for you.
Breaking one sixth of the economy of the largest nation on earth is what mixing separate issues accomplishes.
…and Chris, if you can’t see that not being born is part of the solution…
Non born people (not aborted) have complete health care and nutrition. Tell me I’m wrong.
Chris, did you see Obama claim 100 million people got health insurance through the exchange? OK let’s assume Obama isn’t that stupid and it was just a gaffe and not an intentional lie but he did claim that people getting insurance through the exchange are doing so for the first time in their life and that is an outright lie. We don’t know how many people are getting insurance for the first time and how many are replacing policies that were cancelled.
Perhaps this was Obama’s strategy all along. Lie about people being able to keep their policies. Then when people get new policies claim this was a success and they are first time insurance buyers. Lie after lie after lie.
Oh, the kicker is Obama complained about people spreading misinformation again. Maybe he should keep his mouth shut.