Can Obamacare be Fixed?

[percysunshine]

A true free market in medical care would have medical care responding to demands for lower prices by consumers of medical care. It has not been a free market in a long time because of 3rd and 4th party influences on the transaction.

That need has not been addressed yet as Republicans would consider that objectionable socialism.

What's been addressed is free market insurance to cover health care delivery costs.

Same problem. When State/Federal agencies, as third parties, dictate the allowable terms of insurance, there is no free market. States have been regulating these transactions for a long time. Corporations, participating as fourth parties to the transaction, make it even less of a free market to the extent that they either fund or self insure the purchase of the product.

 

[PMZ]

A true free market in medical care would have medical care responding to demands for lower prices by consumers of medical care. It has not been a free market in a long time because of 3rd and 4th party influences on the transaction.

That need has not been addressed yet as Republicans would consider that objectionable socialism.

What's been addressed is free market insurance to cover health care delivery costs.

Same problem. When State/Federal agencies, as third parties, dictate the allowable terms of insurance, there is no free market. States have been regulating these transactions for a long time. Corporations, participating as fourth parties to the transaction, make it even less of a free market to the extent that they either fund or self insure the purchase of the product.

I think that people should be free to do whatever doesn't impose on others. Don't you?

 

[percysunshine]

That need has not been addressed yet as Republicans would consider that objectionable socialism.

What's been addressed is free market insurance to cover health care delivery costs.

Same problem. When State/Federal agencies, as third parties, dictate the allowable terms of insurance, there is no free market. States have been regulating these transactions for a long time. Corporations, participating as fourth parties to the transaction, make it even less of a free market to the extent that they either fund or self insure the purchase of the product.

I think that people should be free to do whatever doesn't impose on others. Don't you?

That is a good general litmus test on any issue.

 

[dblack]

PMZ, you seem fixated on some really weird misconceptions of what libertarians advocate. It certainly isn't corporations colluding with government to control us.

Is ACA really your idea of a 'free market' approach to health care reform? If so, I'd suggest you do some reading.

It is a free market. Just as free as before Obamacare. In fact more free as customers are empowered with better means to compare different offerings.

Responsible families will see no differences except whatever covered health care delivery cost increases there are.

Irresponsible families will see their options to push their costs off to others limited.

The problem with personal responsibility is........

Heh... that's what I thought. Nevermind.

 

[Bern80]

I refuse to recognize the power of corporations to levy and collect taxes.

Is this somehow connected to ACA?

It's the heart and soul of ACA.

If I were you I wouldn't send tax money to corporations. I certainly don't and wouldn't.

You guys keep saying that corporations are near God. That, as a consumer you just pick the company that you want.

Why the sudden change of heart?

Where has any one in this thread who opposses Obamacare said anything about worshipping corporations? This is why you fail so miserably in your arguments. They're all strawmen because those are the only ones you can win.

 

[Bern80]

PMZ, you seem fixated on some really weird misconceptions of what libertarians advocate. It certainly isn't corporations colluding with government to control us.

Is ACA really your idea of a 'free market' approach to health care reform? If so, I'd suggest you do some reading.

It is a free market. Just as free as before Obamacare. In fact more free as customers are empowered with better means to compare different offerings.

Responsible families will see no differences except whatever covered health care delivery cost increases there are.

Irresponsible families will see their options to push their costs off to others limited.

The problem with personal responsibility is........

No it unequivocally is not as free as choices have been limited. It truly is amazing how someone can lie just to themselves the extent that you do. Especially making statement that are so observably false. The choice of what type of coverage one can purchase has been reduced which is why we are seeing so many policies canceled. That equates to choice elminated and being a less free market. The choice over whether to purchase insurance at all has been taken away also making it a less free market.

The problem with personal responsibility is you would not know it if it bit you in the ass. Obamacare is not a case of personal responsibility. Personl responsibility is suffering the consequences of your CHOICE not to pay for your health care. Not someone forcing you to buy insurance. Please stop telling everyone you're this personal responsibility advocate when you so clearly aren't. Personal responsibility where it comes to health care in no way requires the existence of Obamacare.

 

[Bern80]

That need has not been addressed yet as Republicans would consider that objectionable socialism.

What's been addressed is free market insurance to cover health care delivery costs.

Same problem. When State/Federal agencies, as third parties, dictate the allowable terms of insurance, there is no free market. States have been regulating these transactions for a long time. Corporations, participating as fourth parties to the transaction, make it even less of a free market to the extent that they either fund or self insure the purchase of the product.

I think that people should be free to do whatever doesn't impose on others. Don't you?

Yes. The problem is Obamacare doesn't do that. The community rating mandate combined with the individual mandate essentially says the sick can impose the costs of their care on the healthy.

 

[Bern80]

Most companies already used Community Rating, this is a very minor thing in relation to the ACA.

The usual rating method was broken down down to zip codes.

Again it's not the community rating wasn't done before. It's how the government is forcing the industry to formulate that community rating that is having the severe impact on the premiums of many people.

 

[Bern80]

Well, nothing you have presented is evidence of anything. Why should anyone else have to live up to a standard higher than the one you apply to yourself?

There is a funny story about two economics students. One announced his intent to switch majors to physics. His friend replies, “When you do, the average IQ for the physics department will go up and the average for the economics department will go down.” There is no “law of averages” that requires the average to be higher.

I've already provided my response to the presented article.

It is true that people whom would not have otherwise buy medical insurance will be paying more in terms of medical insurance. Not buying insurance doesn't have a direct insurance cost associated with it.

It is true that people that would not have purchased medical insurance and are lucky enough to not need substantial medical care will end up paying more than they might otherwise have, during the period of time for which they would not have otherwise purchased insurance.

Not purchasing health insurance and not getting sick or being in a sever accident doesn't have either insurance or medical costs associated with it.

The article sited doesn't definitively predict health care premiums. It does provide some insight into some of the effects that will affect health care premiums.

So, What evidence do you think can possibly be provided that will definitively predict prices in the future?

The community rating mandate does that. It perfectly predicts what will happen to the price of premiums. Again it's simply math. It's a mandate that requires insurance companies to avg. premiums across a given risk pool. Therefore some permiums MUST go up. That this regulation exists is your evidence that premiums are and must go up.

Oh billshit. You complain when others make statements without evidence, then you make a sweeping claim based on nothing except some unstated assumptions. Your math is simple, for sure. Unfortunately, it doesn't represent reality.

My question was, "what evidence do you think can possibly be provided that will definitively predict prices in the future?"

And your response makes it clear that evidence doesn't mean anything to you. You continue on this oversimplistic and inappropriately applied average.

And here is yet another article showing exactly what I'm talking about. Are the people in all of these articles just lieing about what is happening to their premiums?

Popular Provision Of Obamacare Is Fueling Sticker Shock For Some Consumers - Kaiser Health News

“I’m kind of shocked,” said Leo Lenaghan, who lives in the Chicago suburbs. The $336-a-month BlueCross Blue Shield policy for his wife and daughter, which had a $2,250 per person annual deductible, is being discontinued and the plan his insurer says is most similar to it in benefits will cost an additional $205 a month. It has a $3,000 per person deductible. “I guess we’re just going to have to suck it up.”

 

[dblack]

I refuse to recognize the power of corporations to levy and collect taxes.

Is this somehow connected to ACA?

It's the heart and soul of ACA.

If I were you I wouldn't send tax money to corporations. I certainly don't and wouldn't.

You guys keep saying that corporations are near God. That, as a consumer you just pick the company that you want.

Why the sudden change of heart?

Coming back to this, it's rather stunning that you're able to accuse others of worshipping corporations when you're advocating for a law that gives them the power to tax us. You don't see any hypocrisy in that?

 

[PMZ]

It's the heart and soul of ACA.

If I were you I wouldn't send tax money to corporations. I certainly don't and wouldn't.

You guys keep saying that corporations are near God. That, as a consumer you just pick the company that you want.

Why the sudden change of heart?

Coming back to this, it's rather stunning that you're able to accuse others of worshipping corporations when you're advocating for a law that gives them the power to tax us. You don't see any hypocrisy in that?

Corporations have no power to tax.

When private companies exist in competitive markets, the only places they should exist, you are free to pick among them. That has nothing to do with having to buy from one of them.

For all intents and purposes we all have to buy food and drugs. But we can choose where.

 

[PMZ]

Same problem. When State/Federal agencies, as third parties, dictate the allowable terms of insurance, there is no free market. States have been regulating these transactions for a long time. Corporations, participating as fourth parties to the transaction, make it even less of a free market to the extent that they either fund or self insure the purchase of the product.

I think that people should be free to do whatever doesn't impose on others. Don't you?

That is a good general litmus test on any issue.

People without the resources to cover their potential health care costs are counting on imposing those costs on others if they happen.

 

[dblack]

If I were you I wouldn't send tax money to corporations. I certainly don't and wouldn't.

You guys keep saying that corporations are near God. That, as a consumer you just pick the company that you want.

Why the sudden change of heart?

Coming back to this, it's rather stunning that you're able to accuse others of worshipping corporations when you're advocating for a law that gives them the power to tax us. You don't see any hypocrisy in that?

Corporations have no power to tax.

ACA give this insurance industry exactly that. The individual mandate is a forced payment for a service whether you want it or not. That's a tax. The only difference between it and legally imposed tax is that we have no directly control over the cost associated with the mandate because we don't elect those setting the rates. It's truly 'taxation without represenation'.

 

[PMZ]

Coming back to this, it's rather stunning that you're able to accuse others of worshipping corporations when you're advocating for a law that gives them the power to tax us. You don't see any hypocrisy in that?

Corporations have no power to tax.

ACA give this insurance industry exactly that. The individual mandate is a forced payment for a service whether you want it or not. That's a tax. The only difference between it and legally imposed tax is that we have no directly control over the cost associated with the mandate because we don't elect those setting the rates. It's truly 'taxation without represenation'.

Why do conservatives always want to reward and empower irresponsibility?

Did you raise your kids that way?

 

[dblack]

Corporations have no power to tax.

ACA give this insurance industry exactly that. The individual mandate is a forced payment for a service whether you want it or not. That's a tax. The only difference between it and legally imposed tax is that we have no directly control over the cost associated with the mandate because we don't elect those setting the rates. It's truly 'taxation without represenation'.

Why do conservatives always want to reward and empower irresponsibility?

Did you raise your kids that way?

C'mon. Skip the phony dodge and defend your position. How can Democrats pretend to be defending us from corporate excess when they're forcing us into their pens as unwilling chattel?

 

[PMZ]

ACA give this insurance industry exactly that. The individual mandate is a forced payment for a service whether you want it or not. That's a tax. The only difference between it and legally imposed tax is that we have no directly control over the cost associated with the mandate because we don't elect those setting the rates. It's truly 'taxation without represenation'.

Why do conservatives always want to reward and empower irresponsibility?

Did you raise your kids that way?

C'mon. Skip the phony dodge and defend your position. How can Democrats pretend to be defending us from corporate excess when they're forcing us into their pens as unwilling chattel?

The real problem, that Republicans offer no solutions for, are people dodging responsibility for their own health care costs and counting on others to carry them if need be.

When Republicans have a proposal for solving that problem, they can offer it.

In the meantime threatening to let mobsters out of the closet is merely childish.

 

[boedicca]

The only way Obama can "Fix" Obamacare is to control the narrative so that the gullible public is fooled into thinking it is fixed.

And here is how they are trying to do it: training news reporters what to say about ObamaCare.

Reporters with the Society of American Business Editors and Writers received "training" on how to cover Obamacare's rollout from a policy expert who works with President Obama's former health information technology adviser.

The Commonwealth Fund's Sara Collins claimed during the training that healthcare.gov's chronic dysfunctionality does not signify "deeper issues" with the law.

"I don't think it signifies deeper problems, I think it is a website issue," Collins told SABEW during the Oct. 28 training seminar.

Her optimistic take on the law's difficulties is unsurprising since she works for an organization led by David Blumenthal, who was President Obama's national coordinator for health information technology from 2009 to 2011.

What is surprising is that an organization claiming to represent professional journalists would endorse "training" delivered by advocates for the program they are covering, which would violate SABEW's code of ethics.

That code encourages journalists to "avoid any practice that might compromise or appear to compromise objectivity or fairness."

A SABEW spokesman did not respond to a request for comment...

Pro-Obamacare team trains reporters on covering Obamacare website problems | WashingtonExaminer.com

 

[dblack]

Why do conservatives always want to reward and empower irresponsibility?

Did you raise your kids that way?

C'mon. Skip the phony dodge and defend your position. How can Democrats pretend to be defending us from corporate excess when they're forcing us into their pens as unwilling chattel?

The real problem, that Republicans offer no solutions for, are people dodging responsibility for their own health care costs and counting on others to carry them if need be.

When Republicans have a proposal for solving that problem, they can offer it.

In the meantime threatening to let mobsters out of the closet is merely childish.

So, nothin?

 

[PMZ]

C'mon. Skip the phony dodge and defend your position. How can Democrats pretend to be defending us from corporate excess when they're forcing us into their pens as unwilling chattel?

The real problem, that Republicans offer no solutions for, are people dodging responsibility for their own health care costs and counting on others to carry them if need be.

When Republicans have a proposal for solving that problem, they can offer it.

In the meantime threatening to let mobsters out of the closet is merely childish.

So, nothin?

Powerful narrative.

 

[dblack]

The real problem, that Republicans offer no solutions for, are people dodging responsibility for their own health care costs and counting on others to carry them if need be.

When Republicans have a proposal for solving that problem, they can offer it.

In the meantime threatening to let mobsters out of the closet is merely childish.

So, nothin?

Powerful narrative.

Are you saying your response is a 'powerful narrative' and I'm not recognizing it? I just don't see how it makes any sense as a response to my question. What gives?