Health Care Passes the US House!

[Rachel Bronwyn]

Correction: You will receive some of my money taken via higher premiums and fines to support your healthcare until such time as I decide that I don't get paid enough to work, move to a warm state and live as a beach bum. Then you get nothing and the whole system goes the way of the Soviet Union.

Of course! This is exactly what has happened in every other country on the planet that has implemented a public healthcare system!

[TF-Viewer]

Originally Posted by Rachel Bronwyn

Of course! This is exactly what has happened in every other country on the planet that has implemented a public healthcare system!

I sense sarcasm.

[Chaos_Absolute]

I don't understand why making health insurance and healthcare available to many more people is a bad thing...

It just seems to me that a lot of people have got the mindset of "Change is bad"

[Soccermom]

Originally Posted by Chaos_Absolute

I don't understand why making health insurance and healthcare available to many more people is a bad thing...

It just seems to me that a lot of people have got the mindset of "Change is bad"

I don't understand how you can not understand.

[LOD]

Originally Posted by Soccermom

I don't understand how you can not understand.

You didn't even understand what was in the bill until after I posted a link.......

[Chaos_Absolute]

Originally Posted by Soccermom

I don't understand how you can not understand.

I don't live in America

To me making healthcare available to everyone is a good thing and makes me wonder why America didn't already off healthcare to everyone... :\

[Rachel Bronwyn]

It's definitely queer, as an outsider looking in, listening to (some) Americans (I'm perfectly aware much of the United States is as puzzled as I regarding the lack of public healthcare) debate the merits of public healthcare. The rest of the developed world and some of the developing world dealt with and put this behind them years ago.

[tjlemke]

Originally Posted by Rachel Bronwyn

It's definitely queer, as an outsider looking in, listening to (some) Americans (I'm perfectly aware much of the United States is as puzzled as I regarding the lack of public healthcare) debate the merits of public healthcare. The rest of the developed world and some of the developing world dealt with and put this behind them years ago.

I hope you're right....

Soccermom

I don't understand how you can not understand.

Elaborate.....


Seriously I don't understand enough to formulate a opinion and am trying to figure out the pros and cons.

How's about we just list both the pros and cons from the perspective of both sides?

[qzar9999]

Originally Posted by liveordie83

Correction I will be using the money i put into the system by working my whole fucking life.

Just like Social Security!

...Oh, wait a minute...

[Bozo]

Originally Posted by tjlemke

How's about we just list both the pros and cons from the perspective of both sides?

Oh, you mean take a welcome break from studying chemistry at 4AM? Sure!

Let's keep in mind any pros and cons are purely speculative. We can't look at a system like Great Britain's and predict what will happen here with certainty because a bunch of OTHER stuff is different over there...malpractice laws are a good example.


PROS

-Most people get insurance. That means they get access to the maintenance care all current insurees have, helping to catch diseases earlier. The higher prevention rates because of this end up lowering health costs for everybody over the long run. It is simpler, for example, do deal with a diabetic caught early with diet and exercise than a more progressed and serious case caught later with insulin treatments, amputations due to circulatory issues, etc.

-The newly insured go to their doctors instead of the expensive emergency room when they have, say, the flu. This reduces the burden on emergency care and also reduces health care costs. (Emergency rooms wipe their records clean of people who haven't paid them their dues in a certain number of years, effectively causing a huge loss of money.)

-The government-generated demand for insurance brings insurance costs downs.

-Your kids can mooch off you longer because you can cover them under your plan until their 26th birthdays.

-You can't be denied a claim for a pre-existing condition. (This example is going to get ugly, but it's medically sound) Let's say I've got a rectal polyp that I don't know about. These are undetectable, usually benign masses just inside the rectum. The only reason I know something is wrong is because there is blood in my stool. It happens, say, once every month, but I don't want to get it checked out because I don't have insurance. I suddenly get insurance, go to the doctor, and say Oh doc, I've had this problem for a few months now. But my new insurance won't cover a pre-existing condition until a year passes by. The formerly benign polyp turns into rectal cancer within that year because I couldn't get it treated. Now, depending on the timing, I either die or cause my insurance company to have to pay for much more expensive cancer treatments.

-The new 30 million + insured people generate a greater demand for health facilities and professionals. Med schools start putting out more doctors, investors start building more hospitals, and more doctors start to open up private practices, which are essentially the kind of small businesses that everyone says run this country. They have a full staff of medical billers, receptionists, phlebotomists, PAs, etc. and this generates a demand for those positions as well as specialized blood working laboratories full of technicians.


CONS

-Insurance companies, feeling the pressure of price caps, do what they can to survive and decrease payouts to doctors in an attempt to balance their bottom lines. Doctors in turn stop accepting those insurance companies, making the concept of even having insurance virtually useless.

-The 30 million + newly insured bring within their numbers brand new lawsuits, driving the cost of malpractice insurance for doctors up, and causing them to raise their fees.

-The approx. 2.00% tax on pharmaceutical companies causes them to raise their prices (this is almost a certainty).

-The approx. 2.00% tax on medical equipment causes hospitals, labs, and private practices to raise their prices.

--Your kids can mooch off you longer because you can cover them under your plan until their 26th birthdays.

-The sudden increase in demand for hospitals and professionals is not met with a quick response, and our heath infrastructure deteriorates during this lag due to the new burden placed on it. Speedy medical care becomes a thing of the past until infrastructure catches up.

-The people who can't afford even the cheapest employer-provided insurance also can't afford the $700 fine they will get for not being insured. People get kicked while they're down.

-Insurance companies simply don't lower premiums.




That's all I can think of for now, but there are a bunch more, I'm sure. One thing I don't see being an issue is the constitutionality of it. It's virtually identical to tax laws. They don't FORCE you to pay taxes, but you do incur monetary penalties if you don't, and then jail time. And let's face it, we may not like it but they do end up paying for some of the nicer things we take for granted in this country.

Notice that, with the way I've broken it down, it seems like most of the pros are related to the more Democratic social ideals, while the cons mostly deal with characteristic Republican fiscal and economic concerns. That's why this was such a dividing issue. It pushed all the right buttons on the one party and all the wrong buttons on the other party.

[Rachel Bronwyn]

People seem confused about the children under twenty-six bit. It only pertains to dependant children. If you have your own place or income, your parents' insurance doesn't cover you. It's illegal for them to claim you as a dependant if you aren't.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

-You can't be denied a claim for a pre-existing condition.

This is in fact an enormous con and demonstrates the political class' piss poor understanding of insurance.

Insurance companies get vilified for it all the time but if you stop and think for a moment, you'll realize there's a very good reason why they do this.

I'll give you a hint: It's the same reason why you can't buy house insurance after your house has already burned down.

Figured it out?

Because then there's no reason whatsoever to buy insurance while all is well! Just wait until the bad stuff happens, then buy it. Can you see what this is going to do to the insurance industry? They'll have more people demanding payouts and they'll have no money to fund it because nobody's investing in the risk pool while they're healthy.

This is going to put massive strain on an already hurting industry. Even with the fine, it's still more worth it to just eat it and not buy insurance until you get sick or injured. The inevitable result: Government is going to have no choice but the jack up the fine or even outright make it a criminal offense not to have insurance.

And I'm not going to stop asking this question as I noticed everyone passed it by: All the people dependant on these state welfare programs, what's going to happen to them when the state finally runs out of money?