Insurance mandate: Should the healthy pay for irresponsibility?

Hell yeah!
Let's reward poor planning by bailing out not just companies but individuals that engage in bad decision making and we'll punish the prudent by taxing them to pay for it all. That'll encourage people to act prudently. Right?

Right you are Rabbi

These morons shouldn't spend money for luxuries like rent, heat and food when they could be paying off a $15,000 doctors bill. Its poor planning on their part

What kind of country makes poor people spend money on rent heat and food? Darn. We need programs to pay for those things. We can call them "Section 8" and "WIC" for starters.
Oh, wait a minute.


Poor people? Who is talking about poor people?

I'm talking about people who work for a living. The struggling self employed. People who work paycheck to paycheck and can't withstand an unexpected healthbill.

You know....Regular, hard working Americans
 
Right you are Rabbi

These morons shouldn't spend money for luxuries like rent, heat and food when they could be paying off a $15,000 doctors bill. Its poor planning on their part

What kind of country makes poor people spend money on rent heat and food? Darn. We need programs to pay for those things. We can call them "Section 8" and "WIC" for starters.
Oh, wait a minute.


Poor people? Who is talking about poor people?

I'm talking about people who work for a living. The struggling self employed. People who work paycheck to paycheck and can't withstand an unexpected healthbill.

You know....Regular, hard working Americans

Yeah the ones who cannot afford the expenses or time off from work to attend teabagger rallies.
 
It is already that way.

What you are suggesting is that there should be a healthy pool and a sickly pool. How does that change the cost issue in our HC system? It doesn't.
Well, I wasn't exactly saying that; I was saying that the healthy should be given the option of buying insurance and contributing to the pool, or of not buying insurance at all. There would still be only one real pool.

I know it doesn't change the overall cost issue of the health care system: the issue here is not absolute cost but relative cost. A public option would have been the best outcome, I think, because it would have dealt with the absolute cost problem of health care; people wouldn't be denied treatment because of lack of funds. It settles the problem of the rich vs. the poor. However, since that option has been pushed off the negotiating table (so it seems), I'm settling for debating the merits of the mandate, because it has effects on the relative cost of health expenses, between the healthy and the non-healthy, because of the influence personal responsibility has on personal health.

I'm not trying to fix the underlying problem of absolute cost, because the option seems to have been already eliminated, for the most part, given the state of the current bill. Not to say that it isn't an important issue.
dying is a benefit to the insurance companies.

And yes, my grandfather began smoking, according to him, at 10 years old by picking up cigarettes tossed out by others, and smoked until he was 68 and lived, healthily....in to his 90's....he and my grandma even lived in their own home, by themselves. People like my grandfather should not be penalized when they cost the system even less than someone who has inherited type 1 diabetes.....
Your personal experience is not important; what matters is the averages and the distribution of what happens to people, not what happened to one person, your grandfather. I'm not trying to be callous, but cherrypicking an example that suits your views doesn't disprove the overall trend. If you look at the net costs of healthy people and compare it to the net costs of unhealthy people, you'll probably find that the healthy people (who are, on average, more responsible with their health) cost less to the system.

In fact, there's a graph that shows this directly:
commonwealthfund.org/%7E/media/Images/Chart%20Maps/Chartcart/Data%20Brief/Health%20Care%20An%20Encouraging%20Sign/H/Health%20Care%20Costs%2064%20Percent%20of%20Expenses/Slide%20Image.gif
"The sickest 10 percent account for 64 percent of expenses" so it says.

The whole aspect of the op to me is preposterous, and very authoritarian and certainly selfish and not what i would expect for someone who lives in the land of the free.....don't you think?
I would be inclined to think that in the "land of the free" one would not be mandated to buy services you don't necessarily need from for-profit insurance corporations. That's not exactly freedom. Of course, a public option, in which the insurance would not be for-profit, would be an entirely different story; it changes everything, and would definitely be better than the current bill, with a mandate but no public option. Unfortunately, the public option seems to be off the negotiating table already, which is why I'm focusing only on the issue of the mandate.

Shit happens to some and not others....you could be in a car accident tomorrow, and be hospitalized for a year....or get cancer, even though you are supposedly healthy....some people may smoke, but guess what, they don't have diabetes or breast cancer that runs in the family or they do not sky dive or they are a stay at home wife who is never exposed to the flu or colds as others might be.....
Again, what is important is the averages. More healthy people are much less of a strain on the system than the unhealthy people. From the image I linked to before:
The healthiest 50% account for 3% of total health care expenditures.
As with everything, there are always outliers, which can be cherrypicked to support a point of view (as you're doing), but it doesn't disprove the overall trend.
the only way Insurance works for both parties, is by spreading everyone's individual risk.....some will ALWAYS be more at risk than you for one disease or another, whether through carelessness or through inheritance or through lifestyle....still doesn't mean that you are risk free or an accident hospitalizing you for a half a year won't happen to you.
The important distinction to be made is between risk sharing and cost sharing. The whole premise of insurance is based on risk sharing, that you don't have to keep $4000 in a private bank account just in case you get into an accident that requires expensive treatment. I'm not disagreeing with that at all.

I am disagreeing with the premise that the healthy (and often more responsible) should be forced to pay into the for-profit system for the unhealthy (and often less responsible). Were there not so much of a difference in responsibility, there wouldn't be much of a problem; that's one reason why car insurance makes sense, because it only takes a split second for an accident to happen - the person is often not at much fault.
 
Right you are Rabbi

These morons shouldn't spend money for luxuries like rent, heat and food when they could be paying off a $15,000 doctors bill. Its poor planning on their part

What kind of country makes poor people spend money on rent heat and food? Darn. We need programs to pay for those things. We can call them "Section 8" and "WIC" for starters.
Oh, wait a minute.


Poor people? Who is talking about poor people?

I'm talking about people who work for a living. The struggling self employed. People who work paycheck to paycheck and can't withstand an unexpected healthbill.

You know....Regular, hard working Americans

90% of whom are covered by their employers' provided policy and are quite happy with it.
What was your point again?
 
In a self responsible world each one would pay for their own health insurance based on thweir own health and risk factors.
There would be no group health insurance policies.

Seems like Libertarians would be against Group insurance policies and refuse to participate in them based on their principles.

precisely.....

but this is not the case for those who work and have "GROUP INSURANCE" rates available....TRY buying an Individual Insurance policy, last year for Matt and me, in Maine, from Anthem BcBS, $25,000 A YEAR with a $5k deductible, with neither of us with any ailments and neither of us on any medication....which was questions they asked before giving you the price of the policy!


GROUP insurance....having a GROUP to spread ALL the risks out, is OBVIOUSLY the way to go at this point in the game though....
So you would support the GOP proposal that allows any kind of group--church, social, what have you--to provide GROUP policies to its members. Right?
 
What kind of country makes poor people spend money on rent heat and food? Darn. We need programs to pay for those things. We can call them "Section 8" and "WIC" for starters.
Oh, wait a minute.


Poor people? Who is talking about poor people?

I'm talking about people who work for a living. The struggling self employed. People who work paycheck to paycheck and can't withstand an unexpected healthbill.

You know....Regular, hard working Americans

90% of whom are covered by their employers' provided policy and are quite happy with it.
What was your point again?

All I have to say to that is an very emphatic BULLSHIT!
 
In a self responsible world each one would pay for their own health insurance based on thweir own health and risk factors.
There would be no group health insurance policies.

Seems like Libertarians would be against Group insurance policies and refuse to participate in them based on their principles.

precisely.....

but this is not the case for those who work and have "GROUP INSURANCE" rates available....TRY buying an Individual Insurance policy, last year for Matt and me, in Maine, from Anthem BcBS, $25,000 A YEAR with a $5k deductible, with neither of us with any ailments and neither of us on any medication....which was questions they asked before giving you the price of the policy!


GROUP insurance....having a GROUP to spread ALL the risks out, is OBVIOUSLY the way to go at this point in the game though....
So you would support the GOP proposal that allows any kind of group--church, social, what have you--to provide GROUP policies to its members. Right?

the devil is in the details....show me the info they have put out on THAT proposal you claim they have suggested so i can read the nitty gritty of it and i'll let you know....
 
In a self responsible world each one would pay for their own health insurance based on thweir own health and risk factors.
There would be no group health insurance policies.

Seems like Libertarians would be against Group insurance policies and refuse to participate in them based on their principles.

precisely.....

but this is not the case for those who work and have "GROUP INSURANCE" rates available....TRY buying an Individual Insurance policy, last year for Matt and me, in Maine, from Anthem BcBS, $25,000 A YEAR with a $5k deductible, with neither of us with any ailments and neither of us on any medication....which was questions they asked before giving you the price of the policy!


GROUP insurance....having a GROUP to spread ALL the risks out, is OBVIOUSLY the way to go at this point in the game though....

Though your point is well taken....IF WE HAD never gone to an insurance based health care system and had just individually been responsible for our own health care, there would have been resistance in the market to the double digit increases health care services has instituted over the last decade and health care prices would not be as high....PERHAPS?

(WSJ-Saturday February 6 - "A Wasted Opportunity")

"The price for an insurance policy for a 20-year old male with Well-Point
in Indianapolis, Indiana is priced from $52 to $202/month depending on the deductible

In Albany, New York it is between $832 and $1,047/month

These disparities are due almost entirely to New York's regulatory mandates.
In N.Y. state with a population of 19 million, only 88 people between the ages of 18 and 24 have bought Well-Point's best selling individual insurance product because insurance laws make it perfectly rational not to acquire costly coverage until people need it."



Maine, like N.Y. has a mandate that everyone with pre-existing conditions must be accepted. I suspect that the rates for the same policies in Maine are even higher than N.Y. State, Maine being a smaller market.

Indiana has an excellent assigned risk insurance pool. The state requires all companies which sell within the state to take on, on a rotating basis, as they come, customers with pre-existing conditions. There is no distinction regarding what the pre-existing condition is. The condition could be cancer or it could be diabetes; it is all the same in the rate charges for those who are uninsurable in the regular market. Uninsurable can mean simply that because of the existing condition, their rates are too high and they can do better in the state assigned risk pool.

Currently in a rural Indiana county the price for an insurance policy for a 20-year (19 to 24) old male assigned risk rate:

$205 - $292/month depending on the deductible ($1,000 or 2,500 in these cases)

All the above are individual rates; they are not group rates.

From these numbers you can get a feeling for how much NY, and Maine have screwed up their insurance markets. Now you guys want all the rest of the country to buy into the same failed regulatory market which cannot end up any other way. The cost will be there whether or not there is the discipline, efficiencies, and the forcing out of fraud that the insurance companies provide versus how any government system would provide, along with the mandates like NY/Maine have decided are essential to their systems.

One last detail about our assigned risk pool inurance: for the first year everything is covered but the pre-existing condition. This must seem very cruel, but it is part of how we keep our rates so low. We're just 'ornery that way here in Indiana, I guess.
 
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This idea only works if insurance companies are prohibited from cancelling coverage when people get sick. Getting coverage before you need it is certainly prudent but it's of no value if the insurance company can just cancel you when you DO need it and AFTER you've paid premiums for years and years.
Exactly. That's why we need legislation prohibiting insurance companies from dropping people because of preexisting conditions (or something like that).
Word of advice. Don't go into business for yourself or ask for other people's money to do it. You can't run an insurance business for a profit if you let people buy in the day after they find out they're sick. Why is that so difficult for you people to understand?
 
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precisely.....

but this is not the case for those who work and have "GROUP INSURANCE" rates available....TRY buying an Individual Insurance policy, last year for Matt and me, in Maine, from Anthem BcBS, $25,000 A YEAR with a $5k deductible, with neither of us with any ailments and neither of us on any medication....which was questions they asked before giving you the price of the policy!


GROUP insurance....having a GROUP to spread ALL the risks out, is OBVIOUSLY the way to go at this point in the game though....
So you would support the GOP proposal that allows any kind of group--church, social, what have you--to provide GROUP policies to its members. Right?

the devil is in the details....show me the info they have put out on THAT proposal you claim they have suggested so i can read the nitty gritty of it and i'll let you know....

GOP bill has been linked all over the place. That includes the same White House that claimed the GOP had no plan.
 
What kind of country makes poor people spend money on rent heat and food? Darn. We need programs to pay for those things. We can call them "Section 8" and "WIC" for starters.
Oh, wait a minute.


Poor people? Who is talking about poor people?

I'm talking about people who work for a living. The struggling self employed. People who work paycheck to paycheck and can't withstand an unexpected healthbill.

You know....Regular, hard working Americans

90% of whom are covered by their employers' provided policy and are quite happy with it.
What was your point again?

Yes, we sure can trust our employers to make healthcare decisions for us. More and more employers are cutting down to bare-bones policies or finding ways to cut insurance entirely. Even those wonderful employer provided plans involve higher copays.
Go for surgery and come out with a $125,000 bill. Your 15% copay comes out to be $18,000.
An $18,000 medical bill is peanuts to people like you and I, but if you make $30,000 a year it is devastating
 
What kind of country makes poor people spend money on rent heat and food? Darn. We need programs to pay for those things. We can call them "Section 8" and "WIC" for starters.
Oh, wait a minute.


Poor people? Who is talking about poor people?

I'm talking about people who work for a living. The struggling self employed. People who work paycheck to paycheck and can't withstand an unexpected healthbill.

You know....Regular, hard working Americans

90% of whom are covered by their employers' provided policy and are quite happy with it.
What was your point again?

90%? NOT!

try +/-60%.......
 
(The following is a quote from my own post #88 above)
(WSJ-Saturday February 6 - "A Wasted Opportunity")

"The price for an insurance policy for a 20-year old male with Well-Point
in Indianapolis, Indiana is priced from $52 to $202/month depending on the deductible

In Albany, New York it is between $832 and $1,047/month
<SNIP>

Maine, like N.Y. has a mandate that everyone with pre-existing conditions must be accepted. I suspect that the rates for the same policies in Maine are even higher than N.Y. State, Maine being a smaller market.

Indiana has an excellent assigned risk insurance pool. The state requires all companies which sell within the state to take on, on a rotating basis, as they come, customers with pre-existing conditions. There is no distinction regarding what the pre-existing condition is. The condition could be cancer or it could be diabetes; it is all the same in the rate charges for those who are uninsurable in the regular market. Uninsurable can mean simply that because of the existing condition, their rates are too high and they can do better in the state assigned risk pool.

Currently in a rural Indiana county the price for an insurance policy for a 20-year (19 to 24) old male assigned risk rate:

$205 - $292/month depending on the deductible ($1,000 or 2,500 in these cases)
<SNIP>

In states like NY or Maine people won’t buy insurance until they’re sick.
“If you can call on the way to the hospital and get coverage, it’s not really insurance at that point.” Thus “prices go up and the number of covered people goes down.”

This kind of destruction of an industry like the insurance industry doesn’t even qualify as “unintended consequences,” considering that state governments have plenty of experience blowing up the insurance markets, as they can look around and see what works and what fails.

Look at New York, look at Maine. Look at what’s going on in Massachusetts right now. Look at what happened in the ‘90s in Kentucky.

Take those states in turn. In Maine, where guaranteed issue went into effect in 1993, there were 11 carriers in the individual market, and now there are two: WellPoint (subsidiary), and another company that would not be called anywhere an equivalent health insurance company.

In Kentucky, 45 insurers fled the state. WellPoint was the last one standing, until the state started in 1998 to repeal most of those regulations.

Today Kentucky has joined with Indiana in Indiana’s assigned risk insurance pool., which shows how much things have changed there. They saw a model for success right next door and they followed it. Perhaps Tennessee will tie into the same insurance market as Indiana and Kentucky as they try to escape from a similar experiment with healthcare and insurance.
 
(The following is a quote from my own post #88 above)
(WSJ-Saturday February 6 - "A Wasted Opportunity")

"The price for an insurance policy for a 20-year old male with Well-Point
in Indianapolis, Indiana is priced from $52 to $202/month depending on the deductible

In Albany, New York it is between $832 and $1,047/month
<SNIP>

Maine, like N.Y. has a mandate that everyone with pre-existing conditions must be accepted. I suspect that the rates for the same policies in Maine are even higher than N.Y. State, Maine being a smaller market.

Indiana has an excellent assigned risk insurance pool. The state requires all companies which sell within the state to take on, on a rotating basis, as they come, customers with pre-existing conditions. There is no distinction regarding what the pre-existing condition is. The condition could be cancer or it could be diabetes; it is all the same in the rate charges for those who are uninsurable in the regular market. Uninsurable can mean simply that because of the existing condition, their rates are too high and they can do better in the state assigned risk pool.

Currently in a rural Indiana county the price for an insurance policy for a 20-year (19 to 24) old male assigned risk rate:

$205 - $292/month depending on the deductible ($1,000 or 2,500 in these cases)
<SNIP>

In states like NY or Maine people won’t buy insurance until they’re sick.
“If you can call on the way to the hospital and get coverage, it’s not really insurance at that point.” Thus “prices go up and the number of covered people goes down.”

This kind of destruction of an industry like the insurance industry doesn’t even qualify as “unintended consequences,” considering that state governments have plenty of experience blowing up the insurance markets, as they can look around and see what works and what fails.

Look at New York, look at Maine. Look at what’s going on in Massachusetts right now. Look at what happened in the ‘90s in Kentucky.

Take those states in turn. In Maine, where guaranteed issue went into effect in 1993, there were 11 carriers in the individual market, and now there are two: WellPoint (subsidiary), and another company that would not be called anywhere an equivalent health insurance company.

In Kentucky, 45 insurers fled the state. WellPoint was the last one standing, until the state started in 1998 to repeal most of those regulations.

Today Kentucky has joined with Indiana in Indiana’s assigned risk insurance pool., which shows how much things have changed there. They saw a model for success right next door and they followed it. Perhaps Tennessee will tie into the same insurance market as Indiana and Kentucky as they try to escape from a similar experiment with healthcare and insurance.

you know, I would love to see some REAL numbers on how many people from Maine have purchased their insurance "on the way to the hospital".....I would bet, ZERO....and they are using that term as a figure of speech or as a scare tactic of what it could be, if people chose such...perhaps?

I can see how the insurance companies have to calculate the risk of people buying insurance on the way to the emergency room/hospital....but more than likely, if they did not have the $25k to buy a policy before their illness, they are not going to have the 25k to purchase it on the Ambulance drive.....no? And more than likely, the state would pick up their bill if they did not have the money.....

So, I am uncertain ....about that particular scenario of why costs would be higher in Maine....

Not to short Maine on their absolute screw up with their supposed health care reform

I do like the idea of an open enrollment that you mentioned earlier...

care
 
Poor people? Who is talking about poor people?

I'm talking about people who work for a living. The struggling self employed. People who work paycheck to paycheck and can't withstand an unexpected healthbill.

You know....Regular, hard working Americans

90% of whom are covered by their employers' provided policy and are quite happy with it.
What was your point again?

Yes, we sure can trust our employers to make healthcare decisions for us. More and more employers are cutting down to bare-bones policies or finding ways to cut insurance entirely. Even those wonderful employer provided plans involve higher copays.
Go for surgery and come out with a $125,000 bill. Your 15% copay comes out to be $18,000.
An $18,000 medical bill is peanuts to people like you and I, but if you make $30,000 a year it is devastating

Good. So you support the GOP plan which empowers workers to have more control over their own health insurance.
I am surprised at how many liberals here really are Republicans and didnt even know it.
 
(The following is a quote from my own post #88 above)
(WSJ-Saturday February 6 - "A Wasted Opportunity")

"The price for an insurance policy for a 20-year old male with Well-Point
in Indianapolis, Indiana is priced from $52 to $202/month depending on the deductible

In Albany, New York it is between $832 and $1,047/month
<SNIP>

Maine, like N.Y. has a mandate that everyone with pre-existing conditions must be accepted. I suspect that the rates for the same policies in Maine are even higher than N.Y. State, Maine being a smaller market.

Indiana has an excellent assigned risk insurance pool. The state requires all companies which sell within the state to take on, on a rotating basis, as they come, customers with pre-existing conditions. There is no distinction regarding what the pre-existing condition is. The condition could be cancer or it could be diabetes; it is all the same in the rate charges for those who are uninsurable in the regular market. Uninsurable can mean simply that because of the existing condition, their rates are too high and they can do better in the state assigned risk pool.

Currently in a rural Indiana county the price for an insurance policy for a 20-year (19 to 24) old male assigned risk rate:

$205 - $292/month depending on the deductible ($1,000 or 2,500 in these cases)
<SNIP>

In states like NY or Maine people won’t buy insurance until they’re sick.
“If you can call on the way to the hospital and get coverage, it’s not really insurance at that point.” Thus “prices go up and the number of covered people goes down.”

This kind of destruction of an industry like the insurance industry doesn’t even qualify as “unintended consequences,” considering that state governments have plenty of experience blowing up the insurance markets, as they can look around and see what works and what fails.

Look at New York, look at Maine. Look at what’s going on in Massachusetts right now. Look at what happened in the ‘90s in Kentucky.

Take those states in turn. In Maine, where guaranteed issue went into effect in 1993, there were 11 carriers in the individual market, and now there are two: WellPoint (subsidiary), and another company that would not be called anywhere an equivalent health insurance company.

In Kentucky, 45 insurers fled the state. WellPoint was the last one standing, until the state started in 1998 to repeal most of those regulations.

Today Kentucky has joined with Indiana in Indiana’s assigned risk insurance pool., which shows how much things have changed there. They saw a model for success right next door and they followed it. Perhaps Tennessee will tie into the same insurance market as Indiana and Kentucky as they try to escape from a similar experiment with healthcare and insurance.

you know, I would love to see some REAL numbers on how many people from Maine have purchased their insurance "on the way to the hospital".....I would bet, ZERO....and they are using that term as a figure of speech or as a scare tactic of what it could be, if people chose such...perhaps?

I can see how the insurance companies have to calculate the risk of people buying insurance on the way to the emergency room/hospital....but more than likely, if they did not have the $25k to buy a policy before their illness, they are not going to have the 25k to purchase it on the Ambulance drive.....no? And more than likely, the state would pick up their bill if they did not have the money.....

So, I am uncertain ....about that particular scenario of why costs would be higher in Maine....

Not to short Maine on their absolute screw up with their supposed health care reform

I do like the idea of an open enrollment that you mentioned earlier...

care

There is not a state plan in existence that mirrors what the Feds want to do that is not deeply in the hole, bankrupt, and with costs far exceeding what were originally projected and sold to their citizens.
Why will the Federal version be any different?
 
you know, I would love to see some REAL numbers on how many people from Maine have purchased their insurance "on the way to the hospital".....I would bet, ZERO....and they are using that term as a figure of speech or as a scare tactic of what it could be, if people chose such...perhaps?

I can see how the insurance companies have to calculate the risk of people buying insurance on the way to the emergency room/hospital....but more than likely, if they did not have the $25k to buy a policy before their illness, they are not going to have the 25k to purchase it on the Ambulance drive.....no? And more than likely, the state would pick up their bill if they did not have the money.....

So, I am uncertain ....about that particular scenario of why costs would be higher in Maine....

Not to short Maine on their absolute screw up with their supposed health care reform

I do like the idea of an open enrollment that you mentioned earlier...

care

We both know that people buying insurance on the way to the hospital is most likely a non-existent scenario; but how about people putting of the purchase of insurance until they discover they have a need? They take that into account as they put off getting medical services they would have to pay for themselves, because heck, it's just too expensive. So they would get the insurance because they can, but of course omit the ambulance drive to the hospital, especially if that would be on them.

And as for the state picking up the bill; wouldn't that imply Medicaid (and Medicaid is distasteful for lots of folks) or the easier choice of creating a bill with no intent to pay? That alone would be a larger factor in Maine than say in Indiana where the public seems less compassionate and more calling for self discipline than Maine, where obviously compassion without concern for incentive rules.

You need to look at the population of Maine; it's only about 1.75 million. It doesn't take much skewing of the model to distort market prices significantly; a part of the reason that Maine's price for an individual health policy is ten to 15 times more expensive than one for an Indiana resident.

You ask, and it is certainly called for to take a close look at the difference between a small state like Indiana and a smaller one like Maine. I suspect, though, that "we" would prefer to be blind because of political exigencies.

The population of the entire state of Maine is not much larger than the population of our capital city of Indianapolis. Indianapolis has higher insurance rates than the rural counties, because of approximately the same conditions Maine suffers from: a lot of dependent poor. Still, a look above shows Indianapolis's rates to be only a fraction of Maine's. Lots of those people would qualify for Medicaid but not being aware they do so they go to the emergency room for basic health services rather than instead causing tax increases instead of medical cost increases.

As far as not getting insurance until one know it&#8217;s about to be needed; I know it&#8217;s done and not really rare at all. One case in point: elderly people who put off certain medical procedures until they qualify for Medicare. Then they will get every possible concern taken care of because they can insure with zero deductible costs to themselves. Anyone is going to take advantage of a "free" (or almost free) service; particularly an almost free medical service.

Way back in POST #58 on this thread I described how Indiana's assigned risk pool works. That is a worthy model for the whole U.S., and with modifications would definitely move us towards ensuring the whole population without the whole system being shaped into one bureaucracy in which case there would be no such instructive disparate examples such as we see between Maine and Indiana. The extra cost for those in the pool could be subsidized if they had financial need at much less cost than alternatives we are considering now.

We desperately need better education in high school, maybe even in middle school to catch those who will leave school without graduating. Our educational system is a disaster, partly because there is too much focus on the ideological rather than the practical. Kids need to know about the tools they will need to ensure their survival. But ideology tells us that that kind of focus would be too conservative/darwinian, that we need a good liberal education to create "compassionate" citizens rather than hard hearted bean-counters.

What we need is a mix of both. I.E. teaching abstinence: Certainly we know if kids wait, they will not get those diseases or the girls pregnant and have unplanned children. So we call it "abstinence only" so as to ridicule the concept, but no amount of talking about contraceptives will overcome the heat of the moment when, for instance, a teenage boy can have unfettered access or in the passion of the moment stop to figure how to put on a rubber. Ain't happening. I&#8217;m even betting the methods they teach aren&#8217;t at all adequate to get that job done....:eusa_whistle:
 
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I would basically agree with you if not for the preexisting conditions thing being included as well. Care is right; insurance has always been about the healthy paying for the unhealthy. Insurance companies are just risk management, and in the process, they risk that the overwhelming majority of their clients will never have major bills to be paid.

If a company has 100 people, they're banking on a fraction of those, maybe like 5, to basically take out more than they put in, while meanwhile, the other 95 put in more than they take out. So, whether there's a mandate or not, you're always going to have the healthy paying for the unhealthy.

Once you throw the clause in there that companies can't reject applicants due to preexisting conditions, the game changes completely. The mandate says you need to be insured or pay a fine. The fine is going to be a lot less than it would be to pay for insurance, so healthy people will opt for the fine. If a healthy person suddenly gets sick, the preexisting conditions clause kicks in, they can sign up for health insurance and have their bills paid for a fraction of the price they would've normally paid, then cancel their plan until they get sick again. This will effectively and eventually eliminate health insurance companies completely, clearing the way for universal government health care.

That is, if this thing passes.
 
How much should the rest of us have to pay for the Inevitable Health Disaster of this Fat Fatty:


4435015653_7af826ba01_o.jpg


An obese mother in the US is trying to put on weight in order to become the world's fattest woman.

Donna Simpson, from New Jersey, weighs 273kg but told the Daily Mail newspaper she had her heart set on reaching her goal weight of 1000lb (450kg) in two years.

The 42-year-old already holds the title of the world's fattest mother after giving birth to her daughter in 2007 when she weighed 241kg.

"I'd love to be 1000lb ... it might be hard though, running after my daughter keeps my weight down," Ms Simpson told the Daily Mail.

Ms Simpson, who needs a mobility scooter to go shopping, eats huge amounts of junk food each week and tries to move as little as possible so she doesn't burn off as many calories.

"I do love cakes and sweet things, doughnuts are my favourite," she said. ...



Woman aims to become world's fattest
 

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