Health insurance is compensation.
Here's a simple enough solution. Ban employer health plans. Have them ...
Here's an even simpler solution. Mind your own ******* business. Let people buy, or not buy, whatever kind of insurance they can afford. Let employers offer whatever kind of compensation attracts the employees they need.
Here's the problem with that stupidity.
1) the Uninsured drive up my costs as someone who buys insurance. Again, when I talk about the huge medical bills that cost me my last job (because my employer illegally fired me) part of the reason why those bills were so high was that the hospital soaks the paying customers to cover the deadbeats.
2) Because the insurance company is out to save the employer money, that usually sucks for the employee.
So, no, I'm not going to mind my own business.
Please feel free to start whining about "Freedom" and the "Founding Fathers".
That is not entirely true. Medicare and Medicaid drive up your costs as someone who buys insurance.
The uninsured do not automatically cost other premium payers. There's a couple of reasons why.
First, not all who are uninsured don't pay. You assume that, but I went to the hospital uninsured, and I got a bill, and paid the bill. Yes it cost quite a bit, and yes it required several months to pay, but I did. Many more people than you know, do this.
In fact, I'll make another post later about this recent BBC documentary on this very issue, and one of the people they interviewed had paid all of her hospital bills, without insurance. She was talking about how great Obama Care was because now her health care costs were 100% covered by the tax payers. So someone who was costing you zero, thanks to Obama Care is now costing you 100% of her health care.
The second reason, is because even if they don't pay, the hospital can sell that debt off to a collection agency, and get back either nearly the entire amount, or a fraction of it. So only a small amount has to be cost shifted. They can put a lien on the house, and get the money back when the house of the person owing the money sells the home. The debt can be held till later when the person is more able to pay.
Regardless, the hospital can recoup some or all of the costs of those who don't pay.
The Third reason, is charities can cover the costs. There are actually hundreds of charities that donate to cover costs of uninsured people.
Between all of these, very few of the uninsured costs are shifted to premium payers.
Comparatively, a patient covered by Medicare and Medicaid, can not be charged for the shortfall in cost. Nor can they recover money lost on treating Medicare or Medicaid with debt collection. Nor can they cover the shortfall with charity. In short, the Hospitals and Doctors, and clinic, absolutely must, and do, cover the cost, by shifting cost to premium payers.
This is exactly why the left has been very adamant about framing the debate as 'the cost is due to uninsured', because the reality most of the high costs are due to Medicare and Medicaid.
This has been documented for many many years. As Medicare and Medicaid payouts drop further below the cost of service, the premium payer costs go up in correlation. Equally, when Medicare and Medicaid payouts are driven up through lobbying efforts of the health care industry, the premium payers costs decline back down to relative to the increase.
There is no notable correlation between the level of uninsured, and premium payer costs.
(At least none that I know of yet) If you have such evidence, I will be more than happy to look at it.
Later, I'll post about the BBC Documentary. It was very enlightening.
