ABC Warns Republicans Against Challenging ObamaCare

I gotta agree with PS.
Archer, preventative care is available. Choose a plan with it and pay $500/month. Or choose a plan without, pay $250 and have a health savings account, and pay cash for smaller expenses. Everyone needs an HSA but the Dems hate them. The reform act cuts back on HSAs and FSAs.

Why should the Gov't force me to buy a "one size fits all" plan? Why can't all the coverages be broken down and itemized in an ala carte fashion so I can purchase what I want, like car insurance. And only be allowed to change it once a year like group plans.

Also, preventative care is not FREE! It is going to be built into the premium with overhead and profit. It certainly makes sense to get it, but it is not INSURANCE any more than an oil change is. (Can't wait for LJ to see that line)

INSURANCE is for large unexpected financial burdens. Not for pre-planned, predictable smaller expenses that everyone needs. Savings accounts are for those.

Joe wrote: I gotta agree with PS.
Archer, preventative care is available. Choose a plan with it and pay $500/month. Or choose a plan without, pay $250 and have a health savings account, and pay cash for smaller expenses. Everyone needs an HSA but the Dems hate them. The reform act cuts back on HSAs and FSAs.

Why should the Gov't force me to buy a "one size fits all" plan?

Also, preventative care is not FREE! It is going to be built into the premium with overhead and profit. It certainly makes sense to get it, but it is not INSURANCE any more than an oil change is. (Can't wait for LJ to see that line)

INSURANCE is for large unexpected financial burdens. Not for pre-planned, predictable smaller expenses.

Joe, many people cannot afford the preventive care for a family of four without insurance.....they pay for insurance, then have to shell out more for those tests and physicals that could save them and their insurance company a bundle. I don't consider a $3000 test to detect cancer a smaller expense....maybe you do. But it sure can save the big bucks down the road. The plans with the new health care bill are not "one size fits all" where ever did you get that idea? there will be choices on how much or how little you want covered, but certain tests etc will be in all plans. You will have choices on premiums, deductibles, buy as much as you want or can afford, but you will be required to have some kind of basic plan.

Archer, I appreciate your answer. I understand one preventative test costs $3000, but most don't. We paid that and it is a burden, but not as bad as $100K for a car crash. However, Flu shots cost $29, annual physicals and mammograms $100-$200, etc. Don't you think the paper work to file all these claims is going to add some overhead cost vs paying cash at the provider?

Let me have an HSA and the choice to save first and pay cash after shopping around. BTW my older plan (not qualified) does not allow for an HSA, I would have to switch plans and re-qualify. The Gov't knows best which plans allow an HSA.

The plans with the new health care bill are not "one size fits all" where ever did you get that idea?

They certainly are. Four qualified plans, (four sizes fit all, sorry) defined by the HSA secretary. With government mandated benefit levels.

As for affordable preventative care, I wonder how many people make use of the 9news health fair every year. http://www.9healthfair.org/ Very low cost screening available for almost free. Also, there are community family health clinics that are already government subsidized that will work with people that take some initiative. But it is easier to sit back sometimes and complain that absolutely nothing is available.

Joe, many people cannot afford the preventive care for a family of four without insurance...

This illogical thinking is where you lose me, and its not just you that thinks this way. The average cost of preventative care is built into the premiums, so if the family of four cant afford it, they cant afford the insurance which includes it??? Its not free either way.

archer wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: In favor or choosing them for myself perhaps archer, but I wouldn't dream of making that choice for you or anyone else and compelling your compliance simply because I think you'll be better off if forced to do what I think best.

With that statement you totally missed the point....no one says you have to get preventive care....only that it should be available to you. One thing that has driven up the hospital costs is emergency care and people who cannot pay.......it is far more cost effective to catch disease early with good preventive care than to treat it in it's later stages. One example......my previous health insurance would not pay for a preventive colonoscopy till last year.....I had put off the expensive procedure partly for that reason, had it been free I would have had it far sooner and most likely saved myself and my insurance company the cost of surgery and chemotherapy.....which to date has run over $100k. They chose to save $3,000 and it ended up costing them $100k. Where is the cost effectiveness in that?

If people have preventive care available to them, and basic health care, emergency rooms might once again be just for emergencies, saving us all some dollars.

No, I didn't miss the point, I made a point. That which the government subsidizes it is allowed to regulate. Its contributions to the maintenance of the interstate highways allows them to withhold that contribution unless the BAC level is set at 0.08, the speed limit is set at 65 mph, there is a primary seat belt law and other federal mandates. Their subsidy of health care will allow them to withhold Medicaid payments unless the state institutes a mandatory annual checkup for all residents as well should they desire to enact one.

Their ability to compel purchase of health insurance will allow compulsion of having the annual check up that the insurance company is required to pay 100% of the cost when you receive it. If you were an insurance company and had to pay every cent of that annual check up, why should someone be allowed not to have it and thereby increase your risk of paying for a much more expensive treatment regime for an illness that could have, or would have, been caught if you had gone for your annual check up? If we are going to have community rating and guaranteed acceptance, why should I have to risk higher insurance premiums to cover expensive treatment that could have been caught much earlier and been much less expensive to cure or treat if you had gone for your annual check up? You do realize that guaranteed coverage regardless of preexisting conditions, no ceiling on care costs, everyone getting the same plans at the same costs (community rating) and all the other "benefits" of the current law are going to make insurance more, not less, expensive for the majority of us, right? You also realize that the major reason that health care costs have gone up is the result of the cost shifting of the cost from the consumers to the health insurance companies because of 1st dollar payments that insurance companies bear don't you? When it costs you the same amount of money to see the doctor regardless of what the total cost of seeing the doctor is, you have less invested in making sure that the price is the lowest price possible. What we have today is more properly known as prepaid health care than health insurance, and the current law only exacerbates the problem by making something "free" to the consumer.

Would I care how much a gallon of gas cost if the station didn't post the price and I only had to pay $10 to get a tankful and the rest of the cost went to the gas insurance company to pick up? Would I care how fuel efficient the vehicle was? Would I care to get the oil changed at the proper interval if I only had to pay $1K dollars to get a new car with the rest of the cost being shifted to the new car insurance company after I ran all the oil out of the car I was driving? When my new car insurance cost went up dramatically because they had to get me a new car every 50K miles I would sure whine and moan about the high cost of the insurance though, wouldn't I, especially when I started having to pay the additional cost resulting from allowing idiots who drive drunk or 100 mph down residential streets to have the same insurance I have at the same cost I pay. This is the state of our health "insurance" industry today and the law that was crammed down our throats a year ago does nothing to address any of it.

Making up your facts again, aren't you. For example, we do not have "prepaid health care", we have health insurance, at least those able to afford it. On one hand you are arguing how expensive health insurance is, and on the other hand you are arguing that health care is free. The state of Colorado did a study recently and found that doing away with lifetime caps and denial of coverage for preexisting conditions raised premiums about 1 - 2%, hardly draconian. The requirement for having health insurance or pay a modest tax on the other hand will LOWER premiums for all dramatically. Not only will more be paying into the insurance pool, there will be less cost shifting onto those who have insurance as is now the case. The new requirement that insurance companies maintain 80 - 85% of premiums on behalf of customers or else rebate the difference back to customers will also dramatically reduce premiums as well. Since health insurance premiums have been spiraling upwards at up to 40% annually, the new laws will be welcome relief.

I'd love to live in that whimsical land of yours Dog, but the socialist utopia it exists in has yet to actually find a way to become reality.

Not prepaid healthcare? You have got to be kidding me, right? You actually think that the insurance company doesn't recover the cost of the care minus your copay for the anticipated number of visits you are likely to make to your primary care physician in the cost of your insurance premium? You are paying the same amount as if it came out of your pocket, you are just paying on the installment plan. That is prepaid health care my friend.

Unless the tax penalty imposed for failing to participate in government mandated commerce is at least close to parity with failure to participate in that government mandated commerce, the choice that will be made by a number of people will be to wait until one has need of the insurance before incurring the cost of obtaining it. If it will only cost someone $1K a year in tax penalties and $6K a year to purchase the insurance; and they know that they can get the insurance when they need it because the insurance company can't refuse to insure them on their preexisting condition; and they know they can get that insurance for the same cost with their preexisting condition as they could if they purchased it when they were healthy; logic alone tells us that they will wait until they have need of the insurance before purchasing it. IIRC prior to the passage of the government mandated participation in the commerce of health insurance, somewhere around 1/3 of the people who were uninsured lived in a family with an income above $50K a year. It wasn't that these people couldn't afford insurance, it was that they were young, healthy and felt they didn't need to purchase it at that point in their lives. Before the government attempted to take it away from them, they enjoyed the individual liberty of self determining whether they wished to participate in the commerce of the health insurance industry.

And if you think that the 80% benefit mandate thresh hold is going to lower either premiums or the cost of care, you are only fooling yourself, for you are certainly not fooling me. Now that the insurance company has a percentage that must be met, they will be willing to pay more for the individual procedures to help them achieve that legislative mandate imposed upon their industry by the government. Most of the insurance companies are already close to that mandate with their current models, and simply allowing a more generous compensation for each MRI, each X-ray, each office visit, each blood test and every suture kit used will allow them to meet the new mandates imposed upon them. Heck, the more expensive the care becomes, the more they can charge for the insurance premium and the more dollars in profit they can make. Remember the "record" profits of Big Oil when the cost of a gallon of gas was $4? They didn't get their record profits from increasing their profit margin, they got them by keeping their profit margin the same on a higher cost. If the company was making a quarter on every gallon sold at $2/gal, they made 50 cents on every gallon sold at $4/gal, doubling their actual dollars in profits on the same volume of product sold. Health care and health insurance will be no different. When you tell someone what percentage of profit they are allowed to make on their product, the result is that the product becomes more expensive so that the company doesn't lose any money in profits. If the company made $100 million in profits when they were paying out 75 cents of every dollar in benefits, the will simply raise the compensation allowed for each procedure, raising their costs and allowing them to raise their premiums so that they continue to make $100 million in profits. The insurance company isn't going to make less money in profits to meet the demands of the government Dog, that is simply not the way it works.

Why do you think that premiums went up so much recently if, as you stated, the cost of removing the caps on coverages and the ability to deny based on preexisting conditions is only 1% to 2% above what it was before the government stuck their nose into the tent? Makes sense now, doesn't it. The insurance industry isn't going to let the general government decide how many actual dollars in profit they make. If the general government decides to limit the percentage of profit, they will simply ensure that they comply with the mandates on their way to earning that $100 million in profits by raising the compensation paid out and charging more for the product so that the mandate is satisfied. I'm certain the care providers won't be too upset at getting more money for the care they provide. Most of the folks in the health care field, along with everyone else, feels they are currently underpaid. The progressives in Congress just gave them the pathway to getting the additional money they feel they are worth with the 80% benefit to premium mandates. It isn't going to lower the cost of anything, it's going to raise it faster than it would have risen on its own.

archer wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: In favor or choosing them for myself perhaps archer, but I wouldn't dream of making that choice for you or anyone else and compelling your compliance simply because I think you'll be better off if forced to do what I think best.

With that statement you totally missed the point....no one says you have to get preventive care....only that it should be available to you. One thing that has driven up the hospital costs is emergency care and people who cannot pay.......it is far more cost effective to catch disease early with good preventive care than to treat it in it's later stages. One example......my previous health insurance would not pay for a preventive colonoscopy till last year.....I had put off the expensive procedure partly for that reason, had it been free I would have had it far sooner and most likely saved myself and my insurance company the cost of surgery and chemotherapy.....which to date has run over $100k. They chose to save $3,000 and it ended up costing them $100k. Where is the cost effectiveness in that?

If people have preventive care available to them, and basic health care, emergency rooms might once again be just for emergencies, saving us all some dollars.

If that $3,000 test is found to be positive in only 1 out of 100 people, the insurance company would have spent $300,000 to save them $100,000.

Ronbo wrote:

archer wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: In favor or choosing them for myself perhaps archer, but I wouldn't dream of making that choice for you or anyone else and compelling your compliance simply because I think you'll be better off if forced to do what I think best.

With that statement you totally missed the point....no one says you have to get preventive care....only that it should be available to you. One thing that has driven up the hospital costs is emergency care and people who cannot pay.......it is far more cost effective to catch disease early with good preventive care than to treat it in it's later stages. One example......my previous health insurance would not pay for a preventive colonoscopy till last year.....I had put off the expensive procedure partly for that reason, had it been free I would have had it far sooner and most likely saved myself and my insurance company the cost of surgery and chemotherapy.....which to date has run over $100k. They chose to save $3,000 and it ended up costing them $100k. Where is the cost effectiveness in that?

If people have preventive care available to them, and basic health care, emergency rooms might once again be just for emergencies, saving us all some dollars.

If that $3,000 test is found to be positive in only 1 out of 100 people, the insurance company would have spent $300,000 to save them $100,000.

That's so commendable for you to be worried about their profits... On the other hand, if YOU happen to be the one who didn't get the $3,000 test, and YOU develop colon cancer, I'm sure YOU'll still feel the same way...as you suffer a slow and painful slide into the terminal end. (But don't worry...The "death panels" will no doubt see to it that no more money is wasted on you than necessary...)

Jeez....

---

Oh, sorry... I almost forgot the obligatory "It was a joke...You Righties don't have a sense of humor."

I never said the test should not be done. Archer asked "Where is the cost effectiveness so I told her. People who state that preventive care is always cheeper than treating something in later stages tend to ignore the total cost of performing those test on the entire population and only compare how much it cost for one person to get the test compared to the cost of treating that one person.

PrintSmith wrote: I'd love to live in that whimsical land of yours Dog, but the socialist utopia it exists in has yet to actually find a way to become reality.

Not prepaid healthcare? You have got to be kidding me, right? You actually think that the insurance company doesn't recover the cost of the care minus your copay for the anticipated number of visits you are likely to make to your primary care physician in the cost of your insurance premium? You are paying the same amount as if it came out of your pocket, you are just paying on the installment plan. That is prepaid health care my friend.

Unless the tax penalty imposed for failing to participate in government mandated commerce is at least close to parity with failure to participate in that government mandated commerce, the choice that will be made by a number of people will be to wait until one has need of the insurance before incurring the cost of obtaining it. If it will only cost someone $1K a year in tax penalties and $6K a year to purchase the insurance; and they know that they can get the insurance when they need it because the insurance company can't refuse to insure them on their preexisting condition; and they know they can get that insurance for the same cost with their preexisting condition as they could if they purchased it when they were healthy; logic alone tells us that they will wait until they have need of the insurance before purchasing it. IIRC prior to the passage of the government mandated participation in the commerce of health insurance, somewhere around 1/3 of the people who were uninsured lived in a family with an income above $50K a year. It wasn't that these people couldn't afford insurance, it was that they were young, healthy and felt they didn't need to purchase it at that point in their lives. Before the government attempted to take it away from them, they enjoyed the individual liberty of self determining whether they wished to participate in the commerce of the health insurance industry.

And if you think that the 80% benefit mandate thresh hold is going to lower either premiums or the cost of care, you are only fooling yourself, for you are certainly not fooling me. Now that the insurance company has a percentage that must be met, they will be willing to pay more for the individual procedures to help them achieve that legislative mandate imposed upon their industry by the government. Most of the insurance companies are already close to that mandate with their current models, and simply allowing a more generous compensation for each MRI, each X-ray, each office visit, each blood test and every suture kit used will allow them to meet the new mandates imposed upon them. Heck, the more expensive the care becomes, the more they can charge for the insurance premium and the more dollars in profit they can make. Remember the "record" profits of Big Oil when the cost of a gallon of gas was $4? They didn't get their record profits from increasing their profit margin, they got them by keeping their profit margin the same on a higher cost. If the company was making a quarter on every gallon sold at $2/gal, they made 50 cents on every gallon sold at $4/gal, doubling their actual dollars in profits on the same volume of product sold. Health care and health insurance will be no different. When you tell someone what percentage of profit they are allowed to make on their product, the result is that the product becomes more expensive so that the company doesn't lose any money in profits. If the company made $100 million in profits when they were paying out 75 cents of every dollar in benefits, the will simply raise the compensation allowed for each procedure, raising their costs and allowing them to raise their premiums so that they continue to make $100 million in profits. The insurance company isn't going to make less money in profits to meet the demands of the government Dog, that is simply not the way it works.

Why do you think that premiums went up so much recently if, as you stated, the cost of removing the caps on coverages and the ability to deny based on preexisting conditions is only 1% to 2% above what it was before the government stuck their nose into the tent? Makes sense now, doesn't it. The insurance industry isn't going to let the general government decide how many actual dollars in profit they make. If the general government decides to limit the percentage of profit, they will simply ensure that they comply with the mandates on their way to earning that $100 million in profits by raising the compensation paid out and charging more for the product so that the mandate is satisfied. I'm certain the care providers won't be too upset at getting more money for the care they provide. Most of the folks in the health care field, along with everyone else, feels they are currently underpaid. The progressives in Congress just gave them the pathway to getting the additional money they feel they are worth with the 80% benefit to premium mandates. It isn't going to lower the cost of anything, it's going to raise it faster than it would have risen on its own.

No, most Americans do not have "prepaid health care", but insurance. If it was "prepaid" then you would only get the medical care in the amount for which you have "prepaid". Instead you purchase coverage which may end up being less than you have "prepaid" or more than you have "prepaid". I have a personal friend who just hit the $1 million dollar coverage limit for her cancer treatment at age 28. She probably paid out maybe $30,000 in premiums in her lifetime. How is that "prepaid"? I, on the other hand, have probably paid closer to $150,000 in premiums in my lifetime, never been hospitalized, annual visits with a copay, so I have received may $10,000 tops in benefits on my $150,000 in your scenario. So am I entitled to a refund on the unused portion of my "prepaid"? Do my survivors receive a rebate if I should not realize the entirety of my "prepaid"?

Most Americans do not believe as you do, that they should avoid health insurance and pay the tax, because there is a waiting period for the purchase of insurance. If you have an accident and have no insurance, you will not be able to run out and buy coverage at that exact time. You might be able to purchase coverage later on for future complications for your then preexisting condition, but you will be stuck for possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical costs that were not covered before the insurance coverage begins. Only an idiot would choose to go that route.

The premiums have been skyrocketing for years if you had not noticed. Much of that went to exorbitant administrative expenses such as $25 million CEO salaries. Further, if the insurance companies act as reckless and in bad faith as your premise supposes, then it will certainly open up the market for health exchanges, non-profits and yes, the dreaded public option. Health insurance companies were given an enormous benefit in allowing them anti-trust exemptions, and in return they were expected to act in the public benefit. Since they are failing in this concern, then they have opened themselves up to government regulation.