A well-said defense of Obamacare
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Torie
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« Reply #25 on: July 01, 2012, 12:13:26 PM »

Something is rotten in Denmark. Probably the government pumping money in, had something to do with it, but it would be great if someone directed me to some intelligent paper on the subject, that has been peer reviewed and sustained that review.

Not a peer-reviewed paper (I'd have to do some digging for that) and this is a bit dated of a FinAid research report.  But despite the ten-year old numbers, I think the identification and breakdown of cost-drivers is still basically good.

http://www.finaid.org/calculators/tuitionanalysis.pdf

Thanks anvi. Some of it doesn't make much sense to me, but to evaluate it, one would need to look at the underlying data, and how it was massaged. I tend to agree that some of it is due to higher salaries, and higher quality, of faculty. And some of that has to do with the ramp up in real incomes of the highly skilled in general. And ascribing maybe a third of the cost problem to that, seems kind of plausible maybe. The balance however seems less plausible.
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anvi
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« Reply #26 on: July 01, 2012, 12:15:21 PM »

Well, I will ask a few administrator friends of mine and get you some peer-reviewed research references.  (I'd be interested to read them too, anyway.)
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ajb
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« Reply #27 on: July 01, 2012, 12:44:39 PM »

Something is rotten in Denmark. Probably the government pumping money in, had something to do with it, but it would be great if someone directed me to some intelligent paper on the subject, that has been peer reviewed and sustained that review.

Not a peer-reviewed paper (I'd have to do some digging for that) and this is a bit dated of a FinAid research report.  But despite the ten-year old numbers, I think the identification and breakdown of cost-drivers is still basically good.

http://www.finaid.org/calculators/tuitionanalysis.pdf

Thanks anvi. Some of it doesn't make much sense to me, but to evaluate it, one would need to look at the underlying data, and how it was massaged. I tend to agree that some of it is due to higher salaries, and higher quality, of faculty. And some of that has to do with the ramp up in real incomes of the highly skilled in general. And ascribing maybe a third of the cost problem to that, seems kind of plausible maybe. The balance however seems less plausible.

Nice to see some supporting data.
The question, of course, is whether rising tuition is a problem or not. To the extent that private-school tuition goes up, that seems like a problem the market will take care of. And with public schools, well, like the paper says (only much more so in the past decade), states have decided not to fund public universities. Each school has choices to make in that context: keep tuition low through drastic cuts, and consequent decline in quality; or invest in quality, and charge more money. If government wants to influence university policy, then they'll need to pay up.
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anvi
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« Reply #28 on: July 01, 2012, 12:56:36 PM »

The cases of private and public increases are of course distinct in important ways.  Private universities are in fierce competition with each other, and since Boards of Trustees are importuned to spend more at the same time that cuts are blamed on their decisions and no one else's, the spending increases continue as do the tuition hikes.  There are a lot more factors in the case of public schools.  State cutbacks are one factor, but so are steadily increasing state reporting requirements, which accounts for some of the increased administrative hiring and extra faculty compensation in cases where they do help there.  But the pumping of more financial aid moneys in also encourages public schools to rely more on tuition at the same time that other sources of funding are in short supply.  There's no doubt that increased instructional costs is a factor too, as well as additional student services that have been piled up by universities which accounts for another good bit of increased administrative hiring.  There are lots of factors, and I think sometimes, because there is a dynamic relation between so many of them, isolating them from one another in quantitative analyses can get tricky.
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WhyteRain
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« Reply #29 on: July 01, 2012, 12:57:48 PM »

It is solid only if it were true. Alas it is not. The young will be getting into the business of subsidizing the old, above and beyond medicare. They are being asked to overpay for their insurance. The moral hazard was the nose in the tent, to move them from free riders into subsidizers - from one end of the field to the other. And we still have a dysfunctional delivery system, with not much competition and price policing to boot.

And when I'm old, the young will pay for me.  And when they're old, the new young will pay for them.  It's the fairest way to do it.
A modest proposal which might seem fairer to some conservatives: if you're one of those young free riders, who can afford health care, but chooses not to buy it, then, if you get catastrophically ill -- cancer, car accident, whatever -- you should be denied treatment, and left to die.

That is how it would work if we were all notoriously stingy progressives. 

The conservative way is that we would all voluntarily donate to save the deserving poor patient in such a situation.

Progressives who insanely think that without government-forced healthcare lots of people will be "left to die" need to explain why that didn't happen before government-forced healthcare.

As you probably already noticed, I'm not saying that anybody would be left to die without the ACA. I'm saying that there are several ways of dealing with the free-rider problem of young people who can afford health insurance, but choose not to purchase it. One (my preferred option) would be Medicare for everyone. One (which the ACA offers) would be to penalize them, ofsetting the financial burden these people willingly inflict on the rest of us, and incentivizing them to buy insurance. A third way would be to let people live, or die, with the consequences of their actions. Our current solution is of course charity, which, as so often, actually amounts to tax dollars through the back door.

The point is that young people who can afford health insurance, but choose not to purchase it, can celebrate their freedom of choice all they like, but the reality is that they're imposing considerable hidden costs on the rest of us, who pay taxes and have health insurance.

Anytime people don't buy something they could afford, that's not THEIR fault.  That's the fault of the people offering the product.  Either the product isn't offering value for the cost or it's totally misdesigned for the consumers you're trying to reach.  With health insurance and young people, it's probably BOTH.

Now, the only question we have to answer is WHY are insurance policies SO MISDESIGNED that young people don't want to buy them?  I would say, Look for the answer in the state regulators:  How many state insurance regulators are 20-somethings?

The solution?  Let insurance companies market to young consumers the kinds of health care policies they WILL buy.  Ones that cover catastrophic loss but not, say, all the crap near and dear to progressive hearts, like birth control pills and sex-change surgery.
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ajb
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« Reply #30 on: July 01, 2012, 01:04:59 PM »

It is solid only if it were true. Alas it is not. The young will be getting into the business of subsidizing the old, above and beyond medicare. They are being asked to overpay for their insurance. The moral hazard was the nose in the tent, to move them from free riders into subsidizers - from one end of the field to the other. And we still have a dysfunctional delivery system, with not much competition and price policing to boot.

And when I'm old, the young will pay for me.  And when they're old, the new young will pay for them.  It's the fairest way to do it.
A modest proposal which might seem fairer to some conservatives: if you're one of those young free riders, who can afford health care, but chooses not to buy it, then, if you get catastrophically ill -- cancer, car accident, whatever -- you should be denied treatment, and left to die.

That is how it would work if we were all notoriously stingy progressives. 

The conservative way is that we would all voluntarily donate to save the deserving poor patient in such a situation.

Progressives who insanely think that without government-forced healthcare lots of people will be "left to die" need to explain why that didn't happen before government-forced healthcare.

As you probably already noticed, I'm not saying that anybody would be left to die without the ACA. I'm saying that there are several ways of dealing with the free-rider problem of young people who can afford health insurance, but choose not to purchase it. One (my preferred option) would be Medicare for everyone. One (which the ACA offers) would be to penalize them, ofsetting the financial burden these people willingly inflict on the rest of us, and incentivizing them to buy insurance. A third way would be to let people live, or die, with the consequences of their actions. Our current solution is of course charity, which, as so often, actually amounts to tax dollars through the back door.

The point is that young people who can afford health insurance, but choose not to purchase it, can celebrate their freedom of choice all they like, but the reality is that they're imposing considerable hidden costs on the rest of us, who pay taxes and have health insurance.

Anytime people don't buy something they could afford, that's not THEIR fault.  That's the fault of the people offering the product.  Either the product isn't offering value for the cost or it's totally misdesigned for the consumers you're trying to reach.  With health insurance and young people, it's probably BOTH.

Now, the only question we have to answer is WHY are insurance policies SO MISDESIGNED that young people don't want to buy them?  I would say, Look for the answer in the state regulators:  How many state insurance regulators are 20-somethings?

The solution?  Let insurance companies market to young consumers the kinds of health care policies they WILL buy.  Ones that cover catastrophic loss but not, say, all the crap near and dear to progressive hearts, like birth control pills and sex-change surgery.
The problem is that the choice not to purchase health insurance is a choice to burden taxpayers with the costs of any catastrophic care you might need. That's the way the world actually works, right now. The government in effect provides free catastrophic health coverage for people who don't purchase their own, so it seems only fair that people either pay for that insurance, or not receive its benefits.
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ajb
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« Reply #31 on: July 01, 2012, 01:08:09 PM »

The cases of private and public increases are of course distinct in important ways.  Private universities are in fierce competition with each other, and since Boards of Trustees are importuned to spend more at the same time that cuts are blamed on their decisions and no one else's, the spending increases continue as do the tuition hikes.  There are a lot more factors in the case of public schools.  State cutbacks are one factor, but so are steadily increasing state reporting requirements, which accounts for some of the increased administrative hiring and extra faculty compensation in cases where they do help there.  But the pumping of more financial aid moneys in also encourages public schools to rely more on tuition at the same time that other sources of funding are in short supply.  There's no doubt that increased instructional costs is a factor too, as well as additional student services that have been piled up by universities which accounts for another good bit of increased administrative hiring.  There are lots of factors, and I think sometimes, because there is a dynamic relation between so many of them, isolating them from one another in quantitative analyses can get tricky.
Certainly, with the proviso that cutbacks increasingly blur the distinction between public and private. A great many flagship state universities now get less than 10% of their funding from state government. They're all looking around for a new business model that works in that environment, and on the whole emulating private research universities seems to be leading to the best outcomes.
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« Reply #32 on: July 01, 2012, 01:56:28 PM »

I read some studies of this online this evening, and I do think, if we just stick with pure community rating, the cross-subsidy issue could indeed be quite burdensome on the young.  I agree in principle with the cycle of life idea.  But if the young can't afford it, it's hard to observe the principle.  I think we may either have to make modifications to the community rating policies akin in some way to how Australia handled it, or just go with means-tested subsidization, which is more straightforward and arguably fairer.  I'm glad the mandate held, but that doesn't solve all the policy problems.

It's the young who have a good job who will have to pay a lot more. If you make less than about 44k, you will get subsidies to pay for your plan. And the rich olds who are getting subsidized are paying more in taxes, though the new tax should have started a little lower. So we do have subsidies built in from rich to poor and from young to old. That sounds just fine with me. You can call it insurance or subsidies or whatever you want but a system that doesn't rely on some subsidies will not survive.
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« Reply #33 on: July 01, 2012, 02:23:30 PM »

It is solid only if it were true. Alas it is not. The young will be getting into the business of subsidizing the old, above and beyond medicare. They are being asked to overpay for their insurance. The moral hazard was the nose in the tent, to move them from free riders into subsidizers - from one end of the field to the other. And we still have a dysfunctional delivery system, with not much competition and price policing to boot.

And when I'm old, the young will pay for me.  And when they're old, the new young will pay for them.  It's the fairest way to do it.
A modest proposal which might seem fairer to some conservatives: if you're one of those young free riders, who can afford health care, but chooses not to buy it, then, if you get catastrophically ill -- cancer, car accident, whatever -- you should be denied treatment, and left to die.

That is how it would work if we were all notoriously stingy progressives. 

The conservative way is that we would all voluntarily donate to save the deserving poor patient in such a situation.

Progressives who insanely think that without government-forced healthcare lots of people will be "left to die" need to explain why that didn't happen before government-forced healthcare.

As you probably already noticed, I'm not saying that anybody would be left to die without the ACA. I'm saying that there are several ways of dealing with the free-rider problem of young people who can afford health insurance, but choose not to purchase it. One (my preferred option) would be Medicare for everyone. One (which the ACA offers) would be to penalize them, ofsetting the financial burden these people willingly inflict on the rest of us, and incentivizing them to buy insurance. A third way would be to let people live, or die, with the consequences of their actions. Our current solution is of course charity, which, as so often, actually amounts to tax dollars through the back door.

The point is that young people who can afford health insurance, but choose not to purchase it, can celebrate their freedom of choice all they like, but the reality is that they're imposing considerable hidden costs on the rest of us, who pay taxes and have health insurance.

Anytime people don't buy something they could afford, that's not THEIR fault.  That's the fault of the people offering the product.  Either the product isn't offering value for the cost or it's totally misdesigned for the consumers you're trying to reach.  With health insurance and young people, it's probably BOTH.

Now, the only question we have to answer is WHY are insurance policies SO MISDESIGNED that young people don't want to buy them?  I would say, Look for the answer in the state regulators:  How many state insurance regulators are 20-somethings?

The solution?  Let insurance companies market to young consumers the kinds of health care policies they WILL buy.  Ones that cover catastrophic loss but not, say, all the crap near and dear to progressive hearts, like birth control pills and sex-change surgery.

Wouldn't a plan geared towards the young also cover birth control?

Letting the young buy cheaper plans will mean someone else picks up the tab. So working class 50-64 year olds get f'ed in that case. Hmm maybe the Democrats should have devised Obamacare to screw over these people as they tend to be Republicans anyways. Of course the same people complaining about the young being screwed now would be complaining about the olds being screwed.
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« Reply #34 on: July 01, 2012, 02:26:29 PM »

And of course I would have preferred Wydens plan to Ppaca but there is no way in hell that would have passed. Asking people to give up the insurance they have currently? Seems DOA.
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muon2
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« Reply #35 on: July 01, 2012, 05:49:42 PM »

The worst cross-subsidy is how public universities were nearly free for the boomers but kids these days have to rack up huge debts to pay for the same education because the Boomers won't support the kinds of taxes their parents paid. That's a more pernicious cross-subsidy.

The parents didn't pay any more in taxes, and probably less overall. Those high marginal rates were paid by almost nobody. The cost of higher education is however a scandal. Something is terribly dysfunctional with that market. I (well my parents) paid about $2000 a year in tuition for eight years from 1969-1977 (college, business school and law school, all at elite institutions), maybe about $10,000 now in inflated dollars. But the cost of tuition is now around $40,000, which means a quadrupling in tuition costs in real inflation adjusted dollars.

Something is rotten in Denmark. Probably the government pumping money in, had something to do with it, but it would be great if someone directed me to some intelligent paper on the subject, that has been peer reviewed and sustained that review.

The biggest secret in college tuition (particularly for private schools) is that since the 70's it has been a mean-tested affair. In 1975 I was admitted to a number of fine liberal arts colleges and when one was done adding up the different scholarships and grants, the actual payment by my parents was about the same for all of them. It's no different with my daughter's tuition today. Everything is ruled by the FAFSA form, and scholarships adjust annually to reflect the previous year's income. The secret emerges because tuition isn't described as mean-tested with the cost for a given income level listed, instead just the top figure for highest income earners is quoted.
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muon2
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« Reply #36 on: July 01, 2012, 05:57:36 PM »

Torie, the base of the plan is than young people will eventually old and get sick.

Properly priced insurance should take that into account. It's like setting up a retirement plan, where if you start at an earlier age you don't need to put in as much per month. Similarly, if you wait to pay for insurance later in life it would be more expensive. Ask any life insurance agent.

What continues to mystify me is the talk of young free riders. As I talk to hospital administrators I find that young people who are working without health insurance do not get a free ride. They may get care to deal with a life-threatening situation, but the hospital will chase them for payments using the usual entourage of letters, calls, collection agencies, and attorneys. The poor may indeed get a free ride, but any plan was going to subsidize their care.
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milhouse24
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« Reply #37 on: July 01, 2012, 11:11:32 PM »

Mitt Romney may support state's rights, but that doesn't mean he supports Federal Involvement in taxing everyone for health care.  Many states can't even afford to implement universal health care.  Its a disaster waiting to happen.
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« Reply #38 on: July 01, 2012, 11:50:26 PM »

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Yep, exactly right. Unless they want to start hauling off nuns to jail. I'm not paying the penalty, and if the IRS wants to haul me away to jail for 'evasion', than so be it.
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« Reply #39 on: July 01, 2012, 11:52:40 PM »

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This is why the liberals want to shut down all the Catholic hospitals. Then people will really die on the street because the Catholics refused to give everyone free condoms.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #40 on: July 02, 2012, 08:08:02 AM »

Lots of young people have mental health issues, sometimes needing hospitalization. Often they just benefit from having medical supervision and regular prescriptions... and yes the cost of the prescription alone is probably less than the cost of insurance... but there's a mental block associated with spending that higher amount with no medical supervision vs. having a doctor prescribe it and having it be much less expensive as part of overall care.

Dental work is not something that springs up at age 40, either.
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pbrower2a
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« Reply #41 on: July 02, 2012, 08:36:27 AM »

The worst cross-subsidy is how public universities were nearly free for the boomers but kids these days have to rack up huge debts to pay for the same education because the Boomers won't support the kinds of taxes their parents paid. That's a more pernicious cross-subsidy.

You might be interested in some Forums on generational history -- that Boomers got pampered but were not so generous with their kids. (Really, it is a matter of Boomer executives and their political stooges gutting the public sector except for graft; those executives and their political stooges have been ungenerous with fellow Boomers not in the economic elite, too).

Such is not good for creating young conservatives. Traditionally, creditors have been on the Right out of concern for the value of their assets and have gone further to the Right as they are bigger creditors, and debtors have tended to the Left on economics -- desiring either more economic opportunity or inflation to reduce the severity of their debts. We used to have lots of moderate conservatives when millions had savings accounts, life-insurance policies, and such low-end investments as corporate bonds, 401Ks, IRAs, and  mutual funds... and after some hard years, savers have largely devoured their savings, bonds pay next to nothing, and the valuations of 401K accounts have been ravaged. A few tycoons and executives have done extremely well by treating others badly.

America is polarized much like Spain in the 1930s in politics. We have no moderate conservatives because we have few surviving small-scale creditors...  and they know that they can become destitute at the caprice of some tycoon or executive. 
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WhyteRain
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« Reply #42 on: July 02, 2012, 09:16:17 AM »

Anytime people don't buy something they could afford, that's not THEIR fault.  That's the fault of the people offering the product.  Either the product isn't offering value for the cost or it's totally misdesigned for the consumers you're trying to reach.  With health insurance and young people, it's probably BOTH.

Now, the only question we have to answer is WHY are insurance policies SO MISDESIGNED that young people don't want to buy them?  I would say, Look for the answer in the state regulators:  How many state insurance regulators are 20-somethings?

The solution?  Let insurance companies market to young consumers the kinds of health care policies they WILL buy.  Ones that cover catastrophic loss but not, say, all the crap near and dear to progressive hearts, like birth control pills and sex-change surgery.

Wouldn't a plan geared towards the young also cover birth control?

Letting the young buy cheaper plans will mean someone else picks up the tab. So working class 50-64 year olds get f'ed in that case.

First, yes, I probably should have said something like "cosmetic breast enhancement surgery" instead of "birth control" -- even though birth control pills are rarely medically necessary.

Second, why shouldn't young people pay less for health insurance?  They use it less.  Insurers charge young people <b>more</b> for <b>auto</b> insurance.  Do you want to change that, too?

As I say, young people aren't crazy.  They intelligently choose not to buy health insurance because it is -- as currently inflicted on them by government regulators -- a bad bargain.  Let the insurers design plans specifically geared to young people and they WILL buy them.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #43 on: July 02, 2012, 09:41:31 AM »

As I say, young people aren't crazy.  They intelligently choose not to buy health insurance because it is -- as currently inflicted on them by government regulators -- a bad bargain.  Let the insurers design plans specifically geared to young people and they WILL buy them.

Young people don't buy insurance because in most states it's a bad bargain - because insurance companies assume only sick or expensive young people buy it and price it accordingly.

Individual insurance is ridiculously expensive in most states where insurance actually has value because of the adverse selection problem. If insurance were available for $250 a month when I was 22, I'd have bought it. But it was more like $1,000 when it was even available, and with high co-pays. An employer pays a fraction of that for a 22-year old employee because of their bargaining power and because requiring employment has the same effect as a mandate - it brings healthy people into the pool.
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muon2
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« Reply #44 on: July 02, 2012, 10:04:48 AM »

As I say, young people aren't crazy.  They intelligently choose not to buy health insurance because it is -- as currently inflicted on them by government regulators -- a bad bargain.  Let the insurers design plans specifically geared to young people and they WILL buy them.

Young people don't buy insurance because in most states it's a bad bargain - because insurance companies assume only sick or expensive young people buy it and price it accordingly.

Individual insurance is ridiculously expensive in most states where insurance actually has value because of the adverse selection problem. If insurance were available for $250 a month when I was 22, I'd have bought it. But it was more like $1,000 when it was even available, and with high co-pays. An employer pays a fraction of that for a 22-year old employee because of their bargaining power and because requiring employment has the same effect as a mandate - it brings healthy people into the pool.

I posted this on the US Gen Disc board. The link at the end gives a pretty good idea of a typical set of state mandates on insurance coverage. This is a big barrier to low-cost policies designed for young people.

A person who can afford health insurance, but chooses not to buy it? Does such a person exist? I'm sure out of 300,000,000 people that applies to somebody. Not a common circumstance though.

Well I obviously exist, so that answers that question. I do have accident insurance though (that would cover an ER bill in something like a car wreck).

I don't have it because it's cheaper to pay $80 the one or two times a year I have to visit a clinic than to pay a $20 co-pay plus a monthly premium (though my job started offering a cheap plan that would only deduct $25 a paycheck it's still not enough for me to come out ahead.)

Are you going to get health insurance in 2014 or pay the tax?
Also, what if you get a serious medical issue that isn't a car wreck?  Are you OK with bankruptcy?

This illustrates one of the problems in the health insurance market. We've folded wellness care such as regular checkups with major medical. With car insurance I can buy a cheap policy to cover large claims only with a high deductible. It's hard to find an equivalent health insurance policy that only covers high-cost procedures with a high deductible. Part of that is due to state mandates on health insurance coverage that set a minimum standard for a policy.

At the end of the day, assuming someone has the means, what difference does it really make if they are substantially self insured up to a point (i.e., a high deductible) and have lower premiums, or with a low deductible and higher premiums?  I hear a lot of chat about how youngs should just be forced to get catastrophic coverage, but if they are not cross subsidizing others (an aspect of Obamacare I still find execrable), the additional cost in premiums of broader coverage should be very small, since their actuarial risk is so low. The main advantage of a high deductible regime for those with means, is that their will be more pricing policemen out there, but that hardly seems central to a viable health care structure to me.

It shouldn't be central, but portions of the public expect certain services for their health care. They go to the state and push to have those services mandated on all policies. Before long it becomes impossible to get a simple, cheap policy because there are so many required add-ons. here's the IL list as an example.
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« Reply #45 on: July 02, 2012, 10:09:59 AM »


This is how the Westboro Baptist Church refers to the President.
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« Reply #46 on: July 02, 2012, 11:21:29 AM »

Lots of young people have mental health issues, sometimes needing hospitalization. Often they just benefit from having medical supervision and regular prescriptions... and yes the cost of the prescription alone is probably less than the cost of insurance... but there's a mental block associated with spending that higher amount with no medical supervision vs. having a doctor prescribe it and having it be much less expensive as part of overall care.

Dental work is not something that springs up at age 40, either.

Well tough luck. We were all young once and we made due. The free market is what makes everyone so successful. If these young people have problems, they should seek religious, not secular treatment.

 There is no plausible defense of Osamacare. It's a Fascist attack on the freedoms of everyday hard-working Americans engineered by a Kenyan socialist who is trying to destroy this country. It is every American's responsibility to fight back against this dung concoction of Beast Obama.

Welcome to the forum
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« Reply #47 on: July 02, 2012, 01:17:42 PM »

Lots of young people have mental health issues, sometimes needing hospitalization. Often they just benefit from having medical supervision and regular prescriptions... and yes the cost of the prescription alone is probably less than the cost of insurance... but there's a mental block associated with spending that higher amount with no medical supervision vs. having a doctor prescribe it and having it be much less expensive as part of overall care.

Dental work is not something that springs up at age 40, either.

Well tough luck. We were all young once and we made due. The free market is what makes everyone so successful. If these young people have problems, they should seek religious, not secular treatment.

 There is no plausible defense of Osamacare. It's a Fascist attack on the freedoms of everyday hard-working Americans engineered by a Kenyan socialist who is trying to destroy this country. It is every American's responsibility to fight back against this dung concoction of Beast Obama.

Welcome to the forum

Thank you. I've been lurking and finally jumped in because I feel conservatives are underrepresented on here.
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Gass3268
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« Reply #48 on: July 02, 2012, 01:45:16 PM »

Lots of young people have mental health issues, sometimes needing hospitalization. Often they just benefit from having medical supervision and regular prescriptions... and yes the cost of the prescription alone is probably less than the cost of insurance... but there's a mental block associated with spending that higher amount with no medical supervision vs. having a doctor prescribe it and having it be much less expensive as part of overall care.

Dental work is not something that springs up at age 40, either.

Well tough luck. We were all young once and we made due. The free market is what makes everyone so successful. If these young people have problems, they should seek religious, not secular treatment.

 There is no plausible defense of Osamacare. It's a Fascist attack on the freedoms of everyday hard-working Americans engineered by a Kenyan socialist who is trying to destroy this country. It is every American's responsibility to fight back against this dung concoction of Beast Obama.

smh
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All Along The Watchtower
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« Reply #49 on: July 02, 2012, 05:15:17 PM »

Lots of young people have mental health issues, sometimes needing hospitalization. Often they just benefit from having medical supervision and regular prescriptions... and yes the cost of the prescription alone is probably less than the cost of insurance... but there's a mental block associated with spending that higher amount with no medical supervision vs. having a doctor prescribe it and having it be much less expensive as part of overall care.

Dental work is not something that springs up at age 40, either.

Well tough luck. We were all young once and we made due. The free market is what makes everyone so successful. If these young people have problems, they should seek religious, not secular treatment.

 There is no plausible defense of Osamacare. It's a Fascist attack on the freedoms of everyday hard-working Americans engineered by a Kenyan socialist who is trying to destroy this country. It is every American's responsibility to fight back against this dung concoction of Beast Obama.

In the words of Mitt Romney:

"Who let the trolls out? Who, who, who, who?"
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