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How will making health insurance mandatory help?

Dunstan said:
The response to that claim is "where are you getting this information"?

It's almost certainly an exaggeration to say that everyone's costs will go up. Obviously at least some people will be paying more, if only because the people who are currently going without insurance will be paying something. But even for those people, that isn't necessarily a bad thing -- many of those people will probably be happy that, with the subsidy, they'll be able to afford health insurance that is currently out of reach for them.
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Say you're running an insurance company and Gilbert, a 55 yr old diabetic two-pack a day smoker whose had a quadruple bypass (one of my coworkers, in fact), applies for coverage. You normally wouldn't touch Gilbert with the fag-end of a birch stick. But now you can't turn Gilbert away, and you can't jack his premiums as high as the moon.

How many healthy people do you need in the pool to compensate for Gilbert? If not enough healthy people sign up, there's only one recourse left: everyone's rates go up.
 
Malerin said:
Say you're running an insurance company and Gilbert, a 55 yr old diabetic two-pack a day smoker whose had a quadruple bypass (one of my coworkers, in fact), applies for coverage. You normally wouldn't touch Gilbert with the fag-end of a birch stick. But now you can't turn Gilbert away, and you can't jack his premiums as high as the moon.

How many healthy people do you need in the pool to compensate for Gilbert? If not enough healthy people sign up, there's only one recourse left: everyone's rates go up.
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You seem to be assuming that insurers have the market power to raise everyone's rates, but that they will only do so post-health-care-reform, and only to compensate for the "Gilberts." But if they have the market power to do so now, what stops them from using it? Are they allergic to making more money? Just really, really generous and kind-spirited?

It's like the argument that baseball owners try to make to fans, that ticket prices are only as high as they are because of those greedy players and their agents -- as if an owner who is selling out a stadium at $50 a ticket is suddenly going to voluntarily cut prices because he just doesn't "need" the money any more.
 
Dunstan said:
You seem to be assuming that insurers have the market power to raise everyone's rates, but that they will only do so post-health-care-reform, and only to compensate for the "Gilberts." But if they have the market power to do so now, what stops them from using it? Are they allergic to making more money? Just really, really generous and kind-spirited?
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Take California for example. If Blue Cross raises its rates, then people will switch to Kaiser or Pacificare. But if Blue Cross, Kaiser, and Pacificare are all having to deal with a flood of "Gilberts", and there aren't enough healthy young people to compensate, they'll all be forced to raise rates.

It's like the argument that baseball owners try to make to fans, that ticket prices are only as high as they are because of those greedy players and their agents -- as if an owner who is selling out a stadium at $50 a ticket is suddenly going to voluntarily cut prices because he just doesn't "need" the money any more.
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Ticket prices are as high as people will pay for tickets.
 
how could anyone argue that a nation with 65% of its people with health insurance is better than a nation with 97% of its people insured?

more insured Americans, means less bankruptcies (which means more spending), less federal billed ER visits, means healthier Americans, etc etc etc.

who would see this as a bad thing?
 
parky76 said:
how could anyone argue that a nation with 65% of its people with health insurance is better than a nation with 97% of its people insured?

more insured Americans, means less bankruptcies (which means more spending), less federal billed ER visits, means healthier Americans, etc etc etc.

who would see this as a bad thing?
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Has anyone done a study comparing the benefit of reducing bankruptcies to the cost of subsidizing health care? Over 60% of bankruptcies are due to medical bills. Seems you would have a huge economical benefit by preventing those bankruptcies.
 
It was very widely reported even outside the US.

http://download.journals.elsevierhealth.com/pdfs/journals/0002-9343/PIIS0002934309004045.pdf

http://www.amjmed.com/home

RESULTS: Using a conservative definition, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92% of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5000, or 10% of pretax family income. The rest met criteria for medical bankruptcy because they had lost significant income due to illness or mortgaged a home to pay medical bills. Most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations. Three quarters had health insurance. Using identical definitions in 2001 and 2007, the share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6%. In logistic regression analysis controlling for demographic factors, the odds that a bankruptcy had a medical cause was 2.38-fold higher in 2007 than in 2001.
CONCLUSIONS: Illness and medical bills contribute to a large and increasing share of US bankruptcies.​
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parky76 said:
how could anyone argue that a nation with 65% of its people with health insurance is better than a nation with 97% of its people insured?

more insured Americans, means less bankruptcies (which means more spending), less federal billed ER visits, means healthier Americans, etc etc etc.

who would see this as a bad thing?
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How could anyone argue that a nation with x% of its people with <insert good thing here> is better than a nation with >x% of its people with <insert same good thing here>?

Now, buy me a house.
 
mortimer said:
How could anyone argue that a nation with x% of its people with <insert good thing here> <insert necessity> is better than a nation with >x% of its people with <insert same good thing here>?<insert same necessity>?
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I'll think you'll find this formula to be a little more accurate.
 
Francesca R said:
It was very widely reported even outside the US.
RESULTS: Using a conservative definition, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92% of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5000, or 10% of pretax family income.
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The funny thing is that under the mandate people are expected to spend more than 10% of their income on health insurance (without any subsidy at all), which apprently is enough to send one to bankruptcy. The average individual health insurance policy is $4,800 per year, and over $13,000 for a family.
 
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WildCat said:
This whole bill is so screwed up I hope it fails to pass and they have to start over with something that actually makes sense.
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Bit late now isn't it WC with the midterms coming up this year?

You guys should get yourself a decent parliamentary democracy. Will make the whole process of passing legislation a lot easier (BTW Wildcat, you should run for congress. You have an amazing ability to be utterly non partisan. They could do with that in there.)!
 
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Better to get a screwed up bill than continue with the extreme stupidity that is the current US health system. Then tweak it later.
 
Because when people are insured, they visit their doctor regularly for checkups and serious issues can be detected before they become life-threatening. If they don't have insurance, they wait until they are dying and go to the ER, and have no means of paying the bill. Thus hospitals raise the price on everything, making insurance go up, and so on.
That and the larger pool lowers the premiums.
 
Francesca R said:
Better to get a screwed up bill than continue with the extreme stupidity that is the current US health system. Then tweak it later.
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That rates as one of the most ignorant comments I've heard in quite a while.

It's essentially a proposal that unlimited power to an administrative agency is superior to a legislative process, based on a logical fallacy that goes as follows and which is usually only heard in political sound bites:

"XYZ is BAD! Anything is better than XYZ! Let's do (vote) ABC!"

where ABC isn't even defined, since "anything is better".
 
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