The question was a hypothetical. Nice way to dodge it though.

And the end result of this 'big problem' is what?

[ ] nuclear Armageddon
[ ] dogs and cats living together
[ ] I'm not sure
[ ] it will take slightly longer for the ACA to reach full projections

Uh Huh, well last I checked the federal government was made up of my neighbours too, just like the local government is. Not sure why the neighbour on my left should be any more incompetent than the neighbour on my right, but maybe you can explain that for me.

We can skip that the ACA was written so that the states would do the bulk of the work in creating exchanges for now.

If the program is in trouble it's not because it's failing, though, it's because it's been wildly successful. Seniors on the whole are healthier than ever and living longer than ever, and Medicare was created at a time when they would die off shortly after signing up. I know in your world that's a huge problem but I wouldn't mind living a long time myself.

Besides, it's not like things like the baby boom and the longer lifespan of seniors haven't been known issues for like 35 years, yet creating solutions to keep Medicare solvent is somehow out of reach? I wonder why...?

I told you fly just throws gas on the fire, im not sure why you think im disagreeing with you

Dodge, answered 100% honestly, same thing.

If the risk pool isn't properly weighted premiums will increase a lot.

ikes, I'll save you the suspense.

I've seen the models and data the insurance companies are using. The oldest age bracket, by itself, is profitable (though less than young) to the insurance companies.

The rates were designed with that in mind. Some companies opted to shift down a little bit assuming 10~20% young population as worst case scenarios in competitive counties.

What we're seeing is insurance companies finding there a previously untapped (or non-existent) demand for (pretty vanilla by pre-ACA standards) insurance by "young and healthy" individuals without health coverage. Yes, those individuals would pay less if there were no restrictions on age rating. But as it turned out, even with the de facto subsidies they are paying to the older (and presumably sicker) Obamacare customers, the young and healthy find Obamacare policies (especially after subsidies) pretty attractive.

grizy,

I'll put this nicely, but I'll take the word of just about every expert over you.

And every expert who actually works in the field (at least those that work on the pricing side who aren't politarding) will tell you the same thing.

The risks going forward putting upward pressures on premiums, beyond overall healthcare cost inflation, are mostly regulatory associated with "feature" creep with heightened expectations of care every year. For example, they are already talking about expanding network requirements.

If everything was purely based on income and not at all based on age or health I'd be 100% down with that. Come on single payer

And they will also tell you the young population needs to be at a proper level to keep rates from rising.

To elaborate a bit further grizy, there's a difference between 'profit' normal people use and 'profit' economic people use. Not raising prices in this kind of situation would be forgoing the economic type of profit.

Companies raise prices on things they are already making money on if they can make more money. The risk pool being older raises the amount of spending the companies have to do on actual care, which raises the amount they can charge (to the 80-20 rule limit). A company would have to be idiotic to not raise their prices in this scenario.

Furthermore, you can expect these increases to hit areas with only one insurer the hardest.

You continue to fail to understand a key point. Insurance companies priced premiums last year using near worst case scenarios.

Such scenarios have not realized and in fact there is evidence the pools will improve going forward in MOST counties.

Counties with one insurer have other major issues at play, not the least of which is low population density and increasing proportion of healthcare costs dominated by fixed costs. Increased network requirements will hit those areas the hardest.

Even taking your post as true, that doesn't change that the lack of young people in the pool is an upward price influence.

I agree with that sentence on face value. In fact I explained that exact same fact in a series of posts when some liberals in this very thread started harping that the compressed age curve is not a subsidy for the older people paid for by the younger people.

What you don't seem to understand is the pool now is better than the pools insurance companies used to set premiums, thought worse than the loltastic WH projections.

Social Security(1935) was created at a time when they would die off before collecting. Medicare was created in 1965. Many people were living into their eighties.

The far left and far right can't agree on anything. Twenty years ago the two parties were center left and center right.

"ikes knows a thing" alert.

Not doing it based on age is a massive subsidy to older people though. Unless, you're going to massively overcharge people who may more (more than cost I mean).

would be nice if you could say the same huh?

ikes, man, if you know that, and you're ****ing IKESTOYS, I think we can assume people who ****ing run health insurance companies know that.

I know you're gonna get real excited to rub liberals noses in premium increases this fall, but don't get your hopes up. The people who lie to you about climate change, Benghazi, the IRS scandal, etc. are lying to you about this, too.

lol only a complete idiot would claim that premiums won't increase this fall.

Do you want to walk it back, or go full ******?

I didn't say premiums won't increase. Premiums were expected to increase, just like they've been increasing for years and years.

What I did say was that you shouldn't get super excited to rub liberal's noses in those premium increases, for all the reasons grizy tried to explain to you, but because you're so lacking self-aware you're still trying to "explain" what everyone already knows and marking that **** up in the W column for Baby Ikesy. There won't be rate shock.

Oh, and by the way, while this thread is just ikes' sad attempt to derive self-esteem by trying(and failing, lol) to argue about health care policy(ikes' home court!) with libruls just because we laugh at his entire ****ing family tree...

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1867050

This **** is about life or death for people. Real human beings, ikes.

ORLY?

Choosing walk it back was the best idea.

iirc grizy does this for a living and is far less likely than the random poster to lie about seeing source materials

not sure why you gotta go with your #feelings here

No? I'm saying that there is a meaningful difference in the types of UHC that those two countries have (not just semantics). A difference that is relevant to Negs' comparison to the VA.

Awesome link, fly.