Obamacare raises health insurance premiums, especially for the young

[CarlosAndSveta 808]

So is it bad someone makes a profit

I didn't say it was bad. I just said that is the reason why even though he pays insurance he still has to pay money when he goes to the doctor.

[lostinblue 1,989]

SURPRISED!!!!!...........not

To me it is one thing to be required to have car insurance to drive a car because to have a car is a choice (true, most American would say it is not a choice). However it is another thing to be required to have health insurance just because we are alive and US citizens. Basically we have to die to get out of paying for health insurance.

I feel bad for the self employed people because they have to eat all the health cost while most of us only see a portion of the true cost of OBAMA CARE because their employeer eat the rest of the cost.

But you will pay for it in that raise you may have received but now is not affordable. Perhaps fewer full time workers will work at you business. So say your son cannot join you working as a full time employee like you did with your father 40 years ago. Perhaps automation will come sooner now and 10% of the labor force will be let go. then there is cost added on to every thing you buy. The trucking company adds 10 surcharge to a delivery. A car part cost 10% more. and on and on and on. Someone will have to pay for the subsidy others get. It is just a fancy way of transferring wealth from the working class to the non working class or less employ able folks.You spent 6 years getting that degree and have maybe a hundred thousand dollars in student loans. You will subsidize that fellow who worked at the filling station his whole life and never missed a happy hour OR closing time.. He was chasing shots while you were cramming for tests year after year. .... Now the government will MAKE you pay for his health insurance and liver surgery to boot. That subsidy is being paid by someone ... and not the Chinese. YOU.

[luckytxn 2,264]

Soak the rich!

But you will pay for it in that raise you may have received but now is not affordable. Perhaps fewer full time workers will work at you business. So say your son cannot join you working as a full time employee like you did with your father 40 years ago. Perhaps automation will come sooner now and 10% of the labor force will be let go. then there is cost added on to every thing you buy. The trucking company adds 10 surcharge to a delivery. A car part cost 10% more. and on and on and on. Someone will have to pay for the subsidy others get. It is just a fancy way of transferring wealth from the working class to the non working class or less employ able folks.You spent 6 years getting that degree and have maybe a hundred thousand dollars in student loans. You will subsidize that fellow who worked at the filling station his whole life and never missed a happy hour OR closing time.. He was chasing shots while you were cramming for tests year after year. .... Now the government will MAKE you pay for his health insurance and liver surgery to boot. That subsidy is being paid by someone ... and not the Chinese. YOU.

[lostinblue 1,989]

Soak the rich!

There is not enough rich people to go around. The middle class will be the ones who pay.

[luckytxn 2,264]

No it won't. There will be more debt to service. Neither party can afford to increase taxes to pay for Socialism.

Are you suggesting that the Republicans we would get a difference?

There is not enough rich people to go around. The middle class will be the ones who pay.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

SURPRISED!!!!!...........not

To me it is one thing to be required to have car insurance to drive a car because to have a car is a choice (true, most American would say it is not a choice). However it is another thing to be required to have health insurance just because we are alive and US citizens. Basically we have to die to get out of paying for health insurance.

I feel bad for the self employed people because they have to eat all the health cost while most of us only see a portion of the true cost of OBAMA CARE because their employeer eat the rest of the cost.

A couple of notes to your otherwise good point.

Car insurance is only required to operate your PRIVATELY owned car on PUBLICALLY owned roads. You are only required to have insurance to protect OTHERS from your actions and you are allowed the option of being "self insured" You are NOT required to purchase automobile insurance to protect yourself or your OWN car (unless required by a lender, but that is not a "law" it is a contractural agreement) So the comparison to buying medical insurance for yourself is valid. Neither are you required to buy car insurance for yourself

The other thing is that you CAN buy car insurance online through any number of nationwide providers...even from a lizard with an annoying British accent. It is astoundingly telling that the Federal giovernment could not do in 3 years what hundreds of companies already do!

That is...sell a variety of insurance products ONLINE to anyone! Can anyone expect a "good system" beyond a flawed website? You would have to be mentally retarded to believe that the same people that can so thoroughly f%k up a website...can provide reliable healthcare.

We never tried with medical insurance, what we have with care insurance. Instead we had a system whereby very few medical insurance providers could operate in any one state.

You also do not have car or home insurance tied to your employment. Why would you? Employment based medical insurance was begun in WW2 to avoid the government regulations capping pay increases. It began as a way to avoid another government regulation.

Much of your costs are related to "Defensive Medicine" yet the attorneys who run congress (a huge percentage of those idiots are attorneys) refuse to introduce medical tort reform. A recent minor surgery to remove a cataract, a 20 minute outpatient procedure) cost more in pre-op visits and tests than for the surgery itself. All to cover the Doctor (actually his malpractice insurance carrier) from possible lawsuits...not to mention the cost of the malpractice premiums themselves. The surgery would have been 60% less expensive if we could have tort reform. Every country with socialized medicine protects itself from parasitic attorneys to reduce the medicl costs it assumes. Why wouldn't the USA do the same to protect our doctors and reduce our costs?

Obamacare does nothing to address this.

we never tried what we should have...FIRST

1. Detach healthcare from employment. Return the premium portion you pay. Let you shop for your own insurance with this. The employer could (at their choice) continue to subsidize YOU as a benefit of employment. Some companies had already doen this with what they called a "cafeteria" plan. Each employee gets a benefit "allowance" and can apply it to any number of benefits...medical care, vacation, etc. A young person may opt for a cheap catastrophic medical plan and 8 extra vacation days, for example.

2. Remove regulations in interstate insurance sales and allow medical insurance providers to compete just as car and home insurance providers do. When we see ads for health insurance on TV with a talking lizard, we have arrived!

3. Limit lawsuits to strict liability and negligence. Sick people die sometimes...we ALL die sometime. It is not necessarily anyone's "fault". It sucks that I have diabetes, for example, and might lose a leg or my eyesight (already had a heart attack) but that was the hand I was dealt. It is not anyone's "fault"

Nothing in Obamacare addresses profits and if it works as planned (it won't...it can't) the insurance companies and medical providers are still going to make huge profits...which means there was never any possibility it could reduce your insurance costs. Indeed we see it is not.

Do not feel bad for the self employed. Employer based medical plans will be canceled next year, they already had the 1 year extension just granted to the self employed. Your price shock is coming this time next year.

[lostinblue 1,989]

Gary Lawyers are the ones who wrote kenyan kare..... A great deal of money flows into washington from them. They are the reason you under go so many tests when you are in a hospital...... If ANYTHING goes wrong ,a lawyer will sue at the drop of a hat..... It is about doctors having to cover their ### every time they see anyone. ......Thus really driving up the cost. But everryone hates the CEO of any company making money. ... Make them the scapegoat. Again how did John Edwards make his money. A man who could have been president.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Dude, lawyers write all legislative documents.

Noone 'hates' CEOs - that's just hysterical rubbish.

[Pooky 3,784]

Noone 'hates' CEOs - that's just hysterical rubbish.

You're funny.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Noone can reasonably agree or disagree with anything on here - it's either love or hate.

[Pooky 3,784]

Noone can reasonably agree or disagree with anything on here - it's either love or hate.

No, it's not.

But the simple fact that you see things as such is rather telling.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

I didn't say it was bad. I just said that is the reason why even though he pays insurance he still has to pay money when he goes to the doctor.

You only collect tax on profits. Unless of course we had the FAIR TAX. I bet you don't want that. Just a hunch.

The reason for "co-pays" and deductibles are to make sure you have "some skin in the game". If insurance covered every medical expense possible we could expect it to be horribly abused,,,and horribly expensive. Co-pays are not required to provide a "profit". Profits are required to provide care.

Auto insurance does not cover oil changes and new tires or brake jobs. Homeowners insurance does not cover maintenance or replacement costs of normal wear on equipment, or new windows if you just decide to replace the old, drafty ones. Why anyone expects medical insurance to do what no other insurance does is wacko!

As for the FSU, they have a two tiered system, the national "free" system and the private "pay cash" system. There is also the intermediate "bribe a government doctor for his cell phone number" system. we have chosen this one for my MIL. We pay a doctor $250 per year for his phone number. When my MIL needs him, she calls and he meets her at the free clinic. He gives preference to those that pay him a bribe. We throw in a quart of good Vermont Maple Syrup and some Lake Champlain Chocolate

This works well, the Doctor gets tax free cash ("black money" they call it in Ukraine) and the patient gets care without waiting for days. In Ukraine, this "co-pay" is actually the "profit" and insures care.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

No, it's not.

But the simple fact that you see things as such is rather telling.

I guess I must have missed the reasoned debate topics amid the slew of partisan ####### threads

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

My Russian wife is so very confused about the American healthcare system...

when they get sick, they just go to the clinic..

Here, they take about $ 400 a month out of my salary., plus we still must pay to go to the doctor, for medicine, and for tests..

She asked me why do they take money every month if we still must pay when we go...

Its a good question, I do not have a good answer..... :-(

The answer is simple.

Because it is INSURANCE, it is not a tax that pays for all medical care as they have in Russia (and everyone avoids the tax by working "under the table") ask her what percebtage of her income was actually reported. Ask her why. How many people do you know in Russia that work ONE job or have ALL their income paid in check form? Most get half, or more, of their salary in cash. You didn't know this? why do you think Canadians flood into Vermont every weeked? 6% sales tax vs. 15% sales tax. We have no sales tax on clothes and shoes and food and medicine. They buy craploads of clothes, take them out of the packaging and stuff the packaging in the trash cans at the mall, (by Staurday afternoon they are overflowing) put them in their suitcase. They go out for a nice dinner, about 1/3 less expensive than in Montreal, stiff the waitress for a tip and drive home "Did you buy anything in the USA?" Non! Ne pas moi! They line up at the border gas stations to buy gas for $3.40 per gallon on their way out. Why? Because they have "free" health care. On Monday they are back in Burlington to get their MRIs, CAT scans, cataract surgery, eye laser surgery, or even heart bypass surgery. Our hospital employs 7.277 people (exact number as of December 1) or about 17% of the local population, in order to provide not only care for 42,000 local residents...but the percentage of 3 million nearby Canadians that can afford it. The hospital gives a 50% discount for cash customers. Otherwise we would have a 12 bed hospital and have to go to Boston for cataract surgery. I Canadians!

Is the answer getting easier for you?

Insurance, what you pay for, is not designed to pay everything and never was. In this country it is YOUR responsibility to pay for ALL of your medical expenses. The government (even under Obamacare) is not repsonsible for ANY of it and (up until now) collected no tax for this. (medicaid and medicare excepted)

So...the REASON is that in this country YOU pay ALL your expenses. Because that can be very expensive and posibly exceed what it is possible for you to pay, you have CHOSEN (heretofore it was a choice) to purchase health insurance. Like your auto and home insurance, you health insurance does not pay for "routine" maintenance, or at least not all of it. You pay auto insuirance and still pay for oil changes, gasoline, tires, brakes, windshield wipers...yada, yada. Heck, I replaced a tialight bulb yesterday and had to pay for ALL of it, in addition to my monthli auto insurance! Can you even imagine! The pirce of the taillight bulb was regulated by the fact that I can buy it ANYWHERE and compare prices, or even order it online and have it delivered to my house. I can choose to change it myself or call around and ask what people will charge me to change my tailight bulb for me.

I suggested we do the same for medical care.

Your wife (and you) are confusing a tax for a government provided service with insurance to help you pay for a personal responsibility.

FYI nurses and other medical staff do not make a "profit" and are paid in every system of care. They are receiving a wage in return for hours worked. That is not a "profit". If it were, it would be taxed at a lower rate (in the USA).

Nurses in Canada, for example, are paid... and use their cash to come to the USA to buy clothes tax free. Thereby using their wages to provide a profit for US merchants. We like it.

No, it's not.

But the simple fact that you see things as such is rather telling.

when intellectually limited to one line responses, it is difficult to make any sense.

Edited December 7, 2013 by Gary and Alla

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

On my phone it's two lines ;-)

I think that concept is easy to grasp. Maybe you need an essay to understand it?