What part of rare castrophe don't you understand?

There is a lot of fallacy here, but I'll try...

Medical treatment is a limited resource, therefore, the people with good insurance are going to get faster, high quality treatment. I'll be standing in line maybe one person in front of the welfare medicaid people, and I don't think for one minute that my catastrophic health care is going to magically improve with insurance.

Insurance, as I understood it, should cover, or partly cover, things I've been paying out of pocket for. Now I'm going to be paying insurance and still be paying out of pocket for these same things.

Yeah, this is the strategy. I also think that I can land something better within a month or two. Just play it by ear for now and no point getting mussed up about it. It sounds like a better strategy to follow lostparadise's idea of spending this little extra money on other resources, like learning more or whatever else.

Actually we will have a pretty good idea come next fall when the new rates come out for 2015. If the risk pool is screwed up then the rates will be very high and then the death spiral will ensue. If the risk pool is what they thought it would be then most likely the rates will be fine. There are countless other factors for success/failure but this is a pretty big early one.

dave, what do you mean by 'medical checkup'? One of the major provisions of Obamacare was adding a slew of preventive services that must be covered for free (no copay, no nothing). (What are my preventive care benefits?)

I wonder if any of this stuff would cover your checkup:

Blood Pressure screening
Cholesterol screening
Colorectal Cancer screening (50+)
Diabetes screening
Diet counseling
Vaccines

Just an FYI, so that you can get the most out of whatever level of service you end up with.

The Feds have latitude on how much to subsidize high risk pools. They'll just up the subsidy if the pools look nasty.

Obama (and most of GOP) will not commit political suicide by forcing insurance companies to cancel, at this point, only individual plans available.

I don't mean to derail the thread, but couldn't a lot of problems be solved if work places got out of the health insurance business? Why can't we just all buy health insurance like we would purchase anything else?

I think this is at the root of the problem and what makes things unfair. Just because Persona A works for General Motors and Person B works for mom & pop shouldn't mean that Person A's dollar has more buying power for doctor bills, prescriptions, and health coverage. What if a loaf of bread, a piece of furniture, or a car were cheaper for Person A just because he happens to work for a company with thousands of employees?

Anyway, maybe this is a naive question. I'm not looking to argue, just curious what would happen if work places stopped providing health insurance altogether and let people shop around and purchase whatever plan they wanted from whichever health insurance company they wanted. It seems this would provide a more competitive marketplace and better deals for everyone. The government could still provide tax incentives for insurance and medical costs.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post my question. Just curious what the the flaw in my thinking is. Thanks.

There's nothing here, or on that list, that pertains to me today.

What amazes me about that list is that everything, expect for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm one-time screening, is either free or extremely cheap without insurance. I actually wouldn't know what the AAA screening costs.

This is an extremely sensible position to have, IMO. I think that preventing companies from offering insurance isn't a good idea though. It is a nice incentive to have to attract higher talent.

There is no part I don't understand.

If you don't think that in many cases you are going to get significantly better or more convenient care with insurance, then I don't know what to tell you. I don't have the motivation to attempt to prove it to you. That's going to take a lot more posts than I am willing to make.


My only point of contention is that you said you were getting "nothing". At this point I think we're agreed that this is untrue. It seems your position is that in your view you're getting almost nothing. I disagree with that as well, but not nearly as much. And if that is what you had written I would not have responded at all.

You can think about it like this. The exchange rates listed are pricing in three things.
A. The cost to insure you against something rare and expensive like cancer or getting hit by a bus.
B. The cost of your routine care. eg. eye exams, drug prescriptions when you have the sniffles
C. Subsidizing people who are chronically sick and previously uninsurable.

Your plan will cost approximately A+B+C.

It sounds like you have been shopping for Bronze level plans which are the cheapest. They are cheap, because they really don't pay any "B" costs due to the high deductibles. It sounds like you want some of those expenses covered, which means you'll have to upgrade to a Silver or Gold plan where they would be. Of course if you don't go to the doctor much, then the Silver and Gold plans might be a bad deal.

I have zero clue where all of this is coming from. Of course, when some people had insurance, there was a tendency to receive better care because that was a differentiating factor. This is no longer the case. Yes, it will raise the baseline a bit, but that is like saying that the quality of life has increased because the minimum wage has increased. At the end of the day, the people with the best insurance are going to get the best service, which is fine, I suppose.

Yes, we can agree on this.

Thanks for the clarification. I haven't looked too deeply into it. For others, these plans cost $300+/month. Of course that is not worth it for me.

There are some problems with the bolded, but first of all, there will still be uninsureds. They just have to pay a penalty. A significant number of people may exercise this option.

Why dont you thank me for shelling out the extra taxes to pay for your subsidy? Or are you just thanking O for being the savior of the redistributer lobby?

lol

Just pretend he's paying for his premiums in pre-tax dollars like all the employer sponsored plans are.

If this does happen (and it is only an if) what happens to the projected cost of the ACA? I would assume it will go up but I could be wrong. And then you have the people coming out of the wood work yelling about another bailout.

You stop taking Medicare or reimburse the government for the cost of your residency yet?

Medicare olds angry about their taxes being used to pay for others' healthcare itt

doctors need to stfu. most of them should be happy that they are not just paid in status and that their cartel prevents them from competing with millions and millions more people. milton friedman hated them.

In before ikes

Goes up, but it will pale when compared to increased Medicaid costs.

The Medicaid expansion is bigger than most people realize. It's actually big enough that solidly middle class families (70k gets you full Medicaid for kids in a family of 4 for example in NJ) will be getting on the plan.

For better or worse, this will bring previously uninsured and underinsured populations into Medicaid.

The idiocy of Medicare being a handout for doctors instead of seniors is pretty awe inspiring.

I'll totally agree the cartel of doctors sucks, but you seem to be unfamiliar with doctors elevated status well before the any cartel existed.

Im fine with their status. They should just be competing with many more people, both foreigners and lower qualified ones, for their wages.