And so it begins- Romney the Job Killer

[cheetah440]

Okay, so kids and the elderly should get "free", which means the rest of us should pay for it.

Everyone else should get insurance. But here's the problem. Everyone else doesn't use as much. So they will not only be the ones paying for the "free" healthcare of the big users (children and elderly), but then they have to pay for the insurance that they may not need.

Which is part of the problem. Insurance is really kind of a form of gambling. You are bettting against getting sick. Most of my life, since the Army and I parted company in 1992, I've had insurance, and used it very little. (I always had the option of going to the VA during periods of unemployment, but never have.) So it was a waste of money for me and my employer to pay for it. Except for the one year I had need of all the surgeries. Exceptly, oddly, that year was oddly the year I was shunted into a dead end position that would disappear.

The problem that ObamaCare and RomneyCare don't cover is that the cost of health care is spiralling out of control, three times the rate of inflation, and that's been the case since the 1990's at least. They do nothing to really address that. All they do is prop up the insurance system by forcing people into it who may not have needed to be there and of course, dumping more tax dollars in.

Another point. Everyone kind of agrees that we should get rid of redaction/pre-existing conditions disallowance. That's fine. The insurance industry has been playing a lot of tricks with that shit. But the only way that works is if you have a mandate. Otherwise, people will just only buy insurance when they get sick.

I think eventually, we are going to go to a single payer system, but we'll be dragged kicking and screaming the whole way.

Well unfortunately Insurance isn't just a hedge/bet against getting sick. If I go to the docs, they pay no matter what. I find that to be stupid. Why should insurance pay for me to get a flue shot? To get an x-ray or an other hundred reasons I may decide I should see a doctor. One reason it is so expensive. I'm 42 and luckily I've been to the docs only a handful of times in 5 yrs.

I've been told that, well it's in the Insurance companies best interest but they don't mandate checkups or physicals etc. Health Insurance really isn't health insurance. So I get that what we have is almost single payer already, just multiple single payers. I would still rather have a private entity (maybe make them all non-profit?) with government oversight than government run with "government" oversight.

If nobody has insurance, how do they pay when they get hit by a truck and need 6 months in the hospital? Nobody ever thinks they are going to "need" insurance. I have a wife and 2 yr old and just took out a 1.5M 20yr term policy. I'm not planning on needing it, so I guess I'm wasting the 30K it will cost over the 20 yrs. I think I'm getting what I'm paying for.
I don't know how just handing it over to the government would contain costs. Everything the government runs costs more and delivers less.

Ever hear of the "Big Dig" in Boston?

 

[JoeB131]

I would submit that the flu shot is a hedge/bet against something more serious for the health insurance carrier and the person who ultimately pays for most of them, the employers. And this is really a part of the problem. Employer health insurance as a benefit evolved because during WWII, the government froze wages and prices, and employers needed to offer fringe benefits to attract talent in labor shortages.

And it works. I don't know how many people stick with jobs they don't like because they can't afford to lose the insurance.

But you make the point, that we aren't going to "let people die" as they said at one GOP debate, and we aren't going to create a national system that covers everyone. So we have this mish-mash of government, employer and private systems.

I had one doctor tell me that his had an employee whose only function is knowing all the insurance policies and how to get the doctor paid. That strikes me as muda (waste) on the highest order.