drizzlybears brother said:
BearGoggles said:
sycasey said:
BearGoggles said:
sycasey said:
BearGoggles said:
The problem is you're asking young healthy (AND generally less wealthy) people to subsidize older people. That makes no sense
Sure it does. That's what health insurance is. The healthy subsidize the sick.
Obamacare set limits on the premiums for the old vs. young - I believe there can't be more than a 3:1 ratio even though the cost of insuring old people is much higher.
Healthy SHARE RISK WITH the sick - correct. But the poor (young) should not subsidize the wealthy (old). As a progressive, that should be offensive to you. It is literally taking money from your children/grandchildren - generational theft.
It's not offensive to me if I also expect to need those benefits when I'm older. I'm not dumb enough to think I'll be young and healthy forever.
Honestly, every argument I see from a conservative about health care makes me think they don't understand how insurance works.
I'd also point out that not all older people are wealthy. Now, if Republicans had ideas about offering more subsidies or coverage for poor people, I'd be happy to listen. I expect I'll be waiting a while.
Translating your statement: "People who disagree with me must be stupid or uninformed." Seriously?
I understand insurance. We just disagree about how to spread the insurance risk/cost. You want to put much more of the burden on the young and generally less wealthy. Not surprisingly, young people will choose not to pay for things they can't afford and/or don't need - which is why catastrophic/limited coverage policies should be an option. Obamacare's arbitrary limits on premiums - the 3:1 rule - was stupid. Older people should pay more (subject to the available subsidies). If you feel forcing young people to pay more is the right approach, why didn't you and other liberals: (i) point blank tell young people that they are going to pay more so that their parents/grandparents will pay less; and/or (ii) simply tax young people, based on their age, to make up the difference?
Yes, there are poor old people - but on the whole old people have more wealth/earnings than young. That is a fact. Not to mention that elderly people eventually qualify for social security and medicare (i.e., subsidies). Older people also have, by definition, a longer horizon of time to progress to a higher wage level, accumulate wealth and/or plan for higher healthcare premiums and expenses, My 18 year doesn't have those options.
I don't think that you understand insurance. Insurance is about pooling the risk of low probability/high cost events. Insuring likely events is just paying a middleman. The classic example is fire insurance.
In the case of medical insurance, if you only include the sick, and exclude the healthy, then there is no risk being shared, you're just paying a middleman.
Ironically, conservatives should be rooting for the success of the ACA as it IS the conservative market-based solution. It is conceived from conservative think tanks, and its failure I believe only increases the likelihood of adopting a single-payer system.
Yes - we know insurance pools risk. The question is how your allocate that risk via premiums - among the groups. Insurance companies operating in the real world - where there is not an arbitrary government imposed 3:1 premium maximum - offer different premiums to groups with different risk exposure. Private insurance companies have to tailor their premiums so that consumers actually want to buy their product - risk v. reward. To be blunt, how you pool the risk matters a lot.
If you live near a wilderness area or have a wood shingle roof (by analogy, an old person in the healthcare scenario), your fire ins. premiums will be higher than someone living in a big city (the young person). In order to garner favor with older people (who vote), the ACA asked young people to share/assume a disproportionate amount of the risk and subsidize old people (whether they were wealthy or poor). People won't buy insurance that they don't need or that is overpriced. How many people living outside flood zones buy flood insurance? How many people living outside CA by earthquake insurance? Why are life and disability policies dirt cheap for young people and really expensive for old.
The conundrum is preexisting conditions. If you crash your car, you can't buy insurance after the accident. But health insurance is now the exact opposite - society steps in for people who are uninsured. But you don't solve that problem by: (i) lying and telling people that everyone can be insured without premiums going up; or (ii) forcing/expecting young healthy people to agree to pay WAY more than they should based on the actuarial risk. Before Obamacare, about 41 million people were uninsured. Today the number is roughly 28 million. That is the clearest proof that government can't mandate that people act against their perceived interest.
As I posted earlier, if Obama and the dems were honest, they would have simply imposed a tax to subsidize the poor and those with pre-existing conditions. Of course, the couldn't have passed a bill by being honest, so they lied (promising everyone that they would save money) and came up with a convoluted system where the transfer payments were hidden or deferred.
Conservatives (some) liked ACA-type of approaches when enacted locally - in states where the actual costs have to be paid without deficit spending. A nationwide one size fits all approach makes no sense and, most importantly, doesn't have any real mechanism for cost controls. There are other conservative ideas - risk corridors, more competition across states, HSAs - that operate in tandem.
I'll ask you a rhetorical questions - why is it that progressive Californians who support the ACA and/or single payer haven't enacted universal coverage in CA?
Of course, the answer is because the costs are prohibitive and they don't want to actually pay for those things. They only like those things when someone else pays.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-first-fiscal-analysis-of-single-payer-1495475434-htmlstory.htmlhttps://www.dailywire.com/news/24750/ca-dems-proposing-spending-1-billion-giving-health-hank-berrien