At this point I would like to set the wagering line, after jake provides more specifics and Riverman(or literally whoever, it's like nonconservatives in this thread are the only people allowed to look **** up) skims the ****ing Wikipedia article and explains it to the thread:

Obamacare will ENORMOUSLY IMPROVE the lives of jake and his GF -200

Obamacare will not significantly change jake's health care situation +300

Obamacare will make things worse for jake +219381287312321

loled

The main difference in health care costs between men and women is reproductive related. It's not unreasonable to have men bear some of the burden for sex and babies since obviously men are involved in both activities. Not to mention older men have higher costs than older women, so it evens out somewhat (I think after age 60 or so but I could be wrong). I should also note that the majority of healthcare (group healthcare and govt programs) was already gender neutral long before ACA. Groups are rated based on age and gender, but people within a specific group typically pay the same premiums regardless of gender AND age.

A more interesting question is health status related. Why should a person who eats well and works out be forced to pay the same premium as an overweight person with a ****ty diet that never works out? I think this situation is more analogous to the auto insurance situation you gave. Unfortunately it's hard to separate out bad health related to behavior vs. bad health related to bad luck, so I don't know that there's a good solution to this problem.

I know people who run very small businesses that provide health insurance to their employees because they think it's the right thing to do. They are constantly terrified of hiring someone who is sick. They may not know that your gf has diabetes, but once they hire her they would probably have to stop offering health insurance to all of their employees and abandon their group plan. At least until next year.

One of the main reasons men's auto INS is higher than women's auto is because men drive more and the reason men drive more is because when a man and woman drive together a HUGE % of the time the man drives. So are you also willing to say, "It's not unreasonable to have women bear some of the burden for men driving them around since obviously women are involved in both activities."?

I agree 100%. The same is/should be said about smokers/ non-smokers, drinkers/ non-drinkers, & drug users/ non-drug users.

They will be able to charge smokers more than non-smokers (up to 1.5x), but that is the only behavior-related distinction, I think.

I wouldn't mind seeing a few more of these but there aren't a lot of behaviors that are as unambiguously bad and easy to test for as smoking.

Right. Calorie counting is pretty contiguously good, as is working out, wearing your seatbelt, washing your hands before you eat, and flossing. The problem comes with getting reliable data first to track each behavior's relative value then to give discounts conditioned on them.

So now more people are going to lose employer based health insurance than was reported according to the CBO. Who would have thought?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/...ost-7-million/

That's exactly what we want the gov to track in a free country.

Should we have the gov measure the portions that we eat? What we eat? How much we exercise? How much we watch TV? Sit in front of computer?

Seems illogical to limit it to only 1.5x. I don't really see a need for a max.

I agree w/ your second point as the only exceptions I can think of are drugs.

Yes, all of those things are good for you and I think health care providers should be able to charge premiums as much as they wont for those who don't do them (or don't do them enough). However, like you said they may be tough to test for.

Why not, the gov already tracks us in countless non-free country ways in the name of protecting us from terrorism and drugs.

Most of that would be unnecessary if they could just track overall footsteps per day/week, they could tell how sedentary people are and charge accordingly.

If indeed the most of the difference can be explained by men driving more when they're both in the car, then yes I'd agree.

And number of uninsured still cut by 27 million, a number that includes any losses in employer based care.

Employers dropping coverage are likely to do so based on an analysis of other available coverage. If their employees will be better off on the individual market with subsidies then they may drop coverage. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

I'm not saying if it's a bad thing or a good thing. We were repeatedly told you will be able to keep your employer based health care plan during the debate. This is not so for those that are being dropped.

My employer health plan sucked when I worked for the 20-person consultancy place. As I imagine is the same with a lot of cash-strapped small businesses with no pricing leverage. I'd much rather have been on the open market with a bunch more choices. Well with the extra money in my pocket that the company was paying.

Might this actually be a much better result? I've never been a fan of the idea of employer based health care. It's a solution to a problem that should not exist anymore.

Well there are a lot of other benefits of employer based health care, especially with larger companies. Without going into too much detail, it basically amounts to efficiencies of administration. There's a reason the MLR rules require loss ratios of 85% in the large group market and only 80% in the small group and individual markets. Employment based healthcare is also an excellent avenue for communication and outreach. Worksite wellness programs, incentive programs, and employer sponsored screenings and immunizations just to name a few are all benefits of group insurance.

I think it has a much better chance of being a better result for small employer groups, since the benefits listed above are for the most part non-existent. Add that to what suzzer said about lack of benefit choices and IMO many employees will be better off in the individual market. Stupidly enough, one of the "benefits" of employer based care is the tax breaks for employees on their premiums. Employees moving to the individual markets lose these tax breaks (for people not eligible for subsidies), and as far as I know nothing has been done to address this issue.

It's pretty obviously implied that both sides (the employer and employee) have to want to continue on for that to hold. It's not the govt that's dropping the coverage, it's the CHOICE of the employer.

Nope, that's pretty much my point. It is pretty easy to tell if someone is a smoker and pretty easy to calculate the added risk of that. That isn't the case with those other things.

The reason for a max is because if the premiums are too high then it defeats the purpose of trying to get as many people insured as possible. Those that smoke and would face 5x premiums will just stay uninsured and use the emergency room like they do now.

I understand the thought behind it I just don't see it as a need. If we are afraid that all INS companies are going to jack up premiums why aren't we scared that all grocery stores are going to jack up the prices on milk and create a max profit grocery stores can make on milk? Some INS companies will go after the millions of smokers if others are making premiums 5x for them.

I love when conservatives have the a-ha moment when they realize that pooling lots of people together lowers the cost of health insurance, but just can't allow themselves to reach the obvious conclusion.

The concern isn't insurance companies jacking up prices for everyone, it's that they'll charge the expected cost of care to each person. Sick people can't afford the cost of their expected care. If insurance companies are jacking up the price on smokers 5x, it's because smokers cost 5x as much to insure. There would be no profit for another insurer to come in and charge them less.