How does the government paying for people's insurance give them skin in the game?
You do know where the government gets the money right?
From what I understand people in the lower wage brackets will have subsidized deductibles and copays as well. If they're below a certain level (138% of poverty level) they will be put on medicaid so they won't have any copays or deductibles.
All Obamacare has done is just increase the cost of insurance. How is hiring a bunch of IRS agents to read our insurance information made us safer or helped to cut costs? It is just all a big lie.
It is time for Obama to say he needs more revenue. Time to raise taxes on the little guy. I will give Obama 30 days to start asking for more revenue! Better prepare to start paying more taxes. Obama care is just a tax.
Well for the ACA I believe it largely taxes rich people. People who presumably already have health insurance.
So explain to me how taxing rich people to give poor people free health insurance makes it so poor people have skin in the game?
Why many in this country stick to the fantasy that free markets in healthcare are the best way to drive down costs is a mystery, especially when many of our counterparts in the western world PROVE the exact opposite. The US is a case study of why that thinking is bullshit. It seems entirely predicated on the myth that doctors in their gleaming white coats, and their corporate bosses, have the patients best interest in mind and nothing else. I am personally good friends with a neurosurgeon, and based on many conversations with her that is absolutely false. They go to work for the same reason we do, to make the most money they can. They game their billing systems to wring every dollar out of each patient. Left unchecked, what you have is the current US healthcare system with it's sky high costs.
With that kind of logic then you admit there is no way to reduce health care costs in this country.
There are virtually zero free market principles that can be tied to our high health care costs.
Medicine and insurance began to undergo increasing amounts of regulation since the early 1900s. Various licensing regulations shrunk the amount of medical schools in half from 1900-1940. What does that half to do with the free market? HMO act? Free market? Answer is no across the board.
This is what's going to happen from Obamacare, I'm sorry but its obvious at this point.
ACA's financials are predicated on the lowest income, best health, pool of people participating. That is, those from 20-30.
Reality is reflected in the stats released by Connecticut. The vast majority of those signing up either fell into state medicare / medicade, or they are older (55+).
Thus on the face of it, this program fails from a funding standpoint.
The next thing to happen will likely be a change to the law, attached to some other unrelated bill, that jacks up 'penalties' for those that refused to participate.
This is the slippery slope.
Agree. When the federal govt is spending 26% of its budget on healthcare related programs as it is now, with all the regulations and admin branches overseeing it, common sense says that its not free market.
My question is simple. How is this responsible? No health care is the cheapest form of health care available and so long as that is an option people will continue to not buy any and force good tax payers to foot the bill when they inevitably end up in the emergency room.
These are exciting times for the Rochester, N.Y., health-care community. In the past several months, this western New York city, with a metropolitan area of 1 million people, has received rave health-care reviews from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Cable News Network, and The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. And in one of last year's presidential debates, Bill Clinton gave Rochester a prime-time plug for its ability to provide community-wide access to medical care at relatively low cost.
How low? Rochester companies are in the enviable position of providing health insurance to their workers for an average of $2,378 per employee per year, one-third less than the national average of $3,573, and about half the average for the rest of New York state.
Several reasons account for the bargain price. Rochester area hospitals operate at an 87 percent occupancy rate, compared with a 67 percent national average. And hospital costs per day average $409, compared with $609 nationwide. Health insurers' administrative expenses are 6 percent, just below half the national average. And some 55 percent of area residents are enrolled in HMOs.
Rochester also has "community-rated" premiums. This means that any resident, whether working for a large or small company, self-employed, or out of work, will pay the same price for health coverage. Among U.S. cities, only Honolulu has a larger population under a community-rated umbrella.
"Insurers can't come to Rochester and cherry-pick, offering lower rates to employers with the youngest, healthiest workers, and thereby forcing everyone else to pay far more," says Thomas T. Mooney, president of The Greater Rochester Metro Chamber of Commerce. "I've talked to taxi drivers in New York City who are uninsured because they'd have to pay $700 a month for coverage. Here they could get into a plan that costs the same as it does for people employed by our biggest companies."
As a result, only 6 percent of Rochester-area residents are uninsured, compared with 14 percent nationwide. Community rating is also behind the city's long tradition of payers and providers working together to make the system operate efficiently.
The other cost-containment strategies include strict regional health planning and limits on payments to physicians. Blue Cross-Blue Shield, which has more than a 73 percent share of the area's health insurance market, uses a fee schedule to reimburse doctors, who routinely accept the insurance amount as payment in full. In addition, most office-based physicians belong to the city's two major IPA-model HMOs.
Still, as well as the Rochester system works, for the past several years it has been battling the same double-digit medical inflation that plagues the rest of the country. "The good news is that we have significantly lower health costs than the rest of our state and nation," says Bruce E. Popper, a Rochester union president who serves on the board of directors of the Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency. "The bad news is that, even here, health costs are becoming increasingly unaffordable."
What makes Rochester's 11 percent annual growth in health costs so troubling is that it persists in spite of the community doing so many things right.
Reading all the responses here for or against Obamacare/ACA many bring up good points yet because of today's highly partisan greed/selfish nature few remember if they even knew America had the template for the best possible solution to healthcare over 20 years ago and was even mentioned by Hillary Clinton during her healthcare attempt, too bad it gets in the way of super size profits.
http://business.highbeam.com/62468/article-1G1-13806821/clouds-closing-rochester-miracle
Still, as well as the Rochester system works, for the past several years it has been battling the same double-digit medical inflation that plagues the rest of the country. "The good news is that we have significantly lower health costs than the rest of our state and nation," says Bruce E. Popper, a Rochester union president who serves on the board of directors of the Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency. "The bad news is that, even here, health costs are becoming increasingly unaffordable."
What makes Rochester's 11 percent annual growth in health costs so troubling is that it persists in spite of the community doing so many things right.
With that kind of logic then you admit there is no way to reduce health care costs in this country.
And why do you feel free market is the answer to reducing costs? Be more specific than just repeating the mantra that free market = lower costs as if it's some absolute truth. Healthcare is not a normal market, and cannot be treated as such. It is a captive market in which everyone must participate.
This is another "you should be screwed if you don't do what I think you should do" threads.
I saw a guy yesterday who is a truck driver. He doesn't make enough to be able to afford insurance even with exchanges. He makes to much for any public assistance. People were screaming before when coverage was unaffordable because it's immoral to deny care and how the people who said "tough luck" were scoundrels.
Now that god sent Obamacare, people who cannot afford insurance aren't responsible and they ought to be cut out of the herd. Tough luck.
Once again we see demonstrated that the moral argument is a front for political partisanship.
Now bring in the magic universal health care as the New Salvation, completely ignoring how anything partisans touch they wreck. But again it's not about care, it's about winning.
You need to go buy a shotgun, rifle and a handgun (pistol or revolver) for every member of your household before the end of the year. By government mandate.
Good with that?
I did not say I believed that, only that you cannot look at a heavily govt subsidized and regulated industry and conclude that free market failed. That is a logical fallacy on your part.
Maybe if there were a national crisis of rabid badgers running amok and attacking citizens. Badger elimination squads patrolled the nation eliminating the badger threat near the homes of people who had badger protection plans. But the badger squads were required by statute to eliminate badgers from the homes of people who didn't even have badger protection plans or firearms to take care of the badgers themselves. In this case I endorse a law that requires people to be prepared for a badger attack. That preparation could include a badger protection plan or a home defense firearm. If the citizen did not prepare for a badger attack in a way that satisfied the statute they would pay a fine to fund the badger elimination squads that they were receiving protection from regardless.
I see this argument all the time from conservatives about freedom of choice and that individuals should not be compelled to buy HC if they don't want it.
My question is simple. How is this responsible?
-snip-
Well for the ACA I believe it largely taxes rich people. People who presumably already have health insurance.
So explain to me how taxing rich people to give poor people free health insurance makes it so poor people have skin in the game?
So unless you are suggesting that we allow a true free market, ie those unable to pay are denied access to the system, then what is the point of the debate? The single biggest regulation in the industry is the requirement that hospitals treat everyone, regardless of ability to pay, which is an absurd regulation in any true free market. The obsessive American illusion that free markets are the right answer to everything is the major obstacle to fixing our healthcare system since from a moral perspective it absolutely cannot be.