Facts on Health Care

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So what is the purpose of requiring such "mandatory benefits"? Simple: It reduces "p" over the entire population of people with policies. But since the total of those "p * c" computations is the sum of all of them for each individual the purpose of such mandates is to force you to pay for someone else's treatment for a condition you cannot possibly suffer.

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The idea behind those "mandatory benefits", typically lower cost care options than the alternatives is that people will correct smaller ailments faster, thus preventing larger, more expensive ones.

Mandates forcing people to pay is literally the business model for all insurance. The healthy/smart/risk averse (driving)/etc. people buy insurance that they more than likely won't need, while sick/weak/stupid people receive more than they pay in. Also, it is much easier to to lump people together based upon risk assessments rather than by any other determining factor.

Why should women have to pay for testicular cancer treatments? or Why should men have to pay for breast cancer treatments? is essentially the question.

I mean, I think its obvious that they are avoiding major lawsuits. Not totally versed in this yet, but I'd imagine there is a more than decent chance some people would have good discrimination suits if charged differently.

Edit: why the downvotes? That is apolitical. Simply answering the questions posed.

Totally free market cash operation would definitely lower costs.

No chance that they would withhold treatment for diabetics. They aren't going down the rabbit hole of which diseases you are getting/worsening by choice. The arguments would be endless.

5thtiger, we shouldn't have health insurance for routine health occurrences

Genetics plays a bigger role than people's decisions.

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Those are both cancer so it's not really an issue. Just strikes different parts of the body (and breast cancer isn't exclusive to women).

The problem with the essential health benefits is they drive up the overall costs, and that makes insurance a bad deal for people who just need protection against risk. Let people choose an old plan without that coverage and it's a good deal again, and most of those policyholders will pay into the system.

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The other side to this, and people need to decide if they are ok with it, and where a lot of the debate whittles down to on this, is that by not setting a minimum standard, you incentivize the healthiest and highest risk-takers to choose lower coverage options. Which leaves the more comprehensive coverage increasingly and increasingly more expensive, and often out of reach for more and more people that need it. Who then get forced into less adequate coverage because it's all they can afford. Couple that with no mandates or penalties and you go back to the barebones individual market we had. Though slightly more expensive(though for many probably cheaper then the mandated situation) if you still eliminate pre-existing conditions because people will just wait til they need it to join more comprehensive care.

Ultimately, the lowest common denominator becomes the main standard and the old mandated baseline now becomes a luxury fewer people can afford.

It becomes a trade-off game. Do you eliminate mandates/minimum coverages and create cheaper premiums but make the equivalent of the previous mandated baseline more expensive? Or do you create a baseline benefit mandate and make premiums more expensive then when un-mandated, but will keep that benefit baseline cheaper then had you sought that level of coverage without the mandate?There are winners and losers in either scenario.

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The other side to this, and people need to decide if they are ok with it, and where a lot of the debate whittles down to on this, is that by not setting a minimum standard, you incentivize the healthiest and highest risk-takers to choose lower coverage options, which leaves the more comprehensive coverage increasingly and increasingly more expensive, and often out of reach for more and more people that need it, who then get forced into less adequate coverage because its all they can afford.

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Probably better than having them opt out altogether and leaving a sicker risk pool. With less comprehensive coverage as an option, low risk people will be more likely to enroll,and they'll be paying in $100-$200 a month instead of $0.

Other problem with essential health benefits is whatever's left off the list will eventually be excluded from "comprehensive" plans, so you end up with people who paid $600 or more a month getting sick and finding out their insurance is useless.

I just edited in a paragraph to wrap up my point.

It is ultimately a choice of trade-offs. All else being equal, it becomes a choice of lower premiums but less comprehensive coverage, that makes more comprehensive coverage more expensive then under a mandated benefit system. Or more comprehensive coverage, but at a slightly lower rate then attaining that same level of coverage without a benefit mandate. Where the cheapest premiums will be more expensive then without a mandate.

It's a tradeoff problem. Something this OP's piece doesn't really get into addressing in any of his supplemental policy ideas either.

I don't understand how someone can downvote a mathematical formula

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I have never met someone that chose to get cancer, have a genetic heart condition, or get hit by a bus.

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How many have you met that chose be stuck with their bills?

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Insurers are risk averse,

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100% false. Insurers wouldn't exist if they avoided risk.

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one of the problems that led to Medicare, Medicaid, high risk government pools, and the ACA came about specifically because the private insurers refuse to insure high risk people.

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Medicare and Medicaid came about as a way to buy democrat votes. Nothing to do with insurability of people.

Insurers have never refused to cover high-risk people. They just priced it appropriately.

You insure damn near anything.

But if you're insuring something for $1,000,000 in value, as the risk of loss approaches 100% the premium is going to approach $1,000,000.

That is entirely appropriate and expended for insurance.

What one cannot do.. is "insure" NON-risk events. A person with PECs is not a risk. The "risk" for them is 100% certainty. So they would be properly priced at 1:1 with their expenditures.

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Just because a person's probability to get any one type of disease is low, the combined probability of any sort of catastrophe or health problem is much higher.

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Oh dear.

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The author cherry picks

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The Affordable Care Act was nothing more than a huge transference of wealth. It is amazing that a benefit which was previously provided by employers on a voluntary basis has now been placed under governmental control, forcing certain employers to provide the benefits or be fined, while telling them how the benefits are to be paid, how much they must pay, what is covered and deciding which of their employees lifestyles are to be subsidized by other employees.

In addition we were also being forced to subsidize health insurers through reimbursement corridors and subsidies when they were required to discard actuarial prognostications to assume any all risks with the knowledge that if their profits dropped accordingly the taxpayers would make up the difference. Now the courts have finally reigned in this assault on our constitution by this administration by ruling these subsidies can only be paid when authorized by Congress. Congress has refused to allocate the funding and the carriers have elected to abandon this sinking vessel.

Yes, the " uninsured rate " may have dropped . Much of this is due to the mandate to purchase ( the first time in the history of this country the populace is forced to purchase a product just for existing) and those who would have been eligible for Medicaid even without the Affordable Care Act. Yet, the new insureds really are no better off as they must absorb large deductibles and co-payments to access their coverage. This is prohibitive for many. When the Democrats were passing the ACA we were told, depending on the audience that there were 30,000,000 to 50,000,000 uninsured people in the country who would benefit from passing the ACA. Lets split it and call it 40 million uninsured. If those numbers were true then there should have been a stampede to sign up for coverage last year and this year.

The Health and Human Services claims the number of signups last year is 9.4 million Remember, though we were not told the truth about 2015 signups. It was eventually exposed and finally admitted by the administration that they had lied and the number of signups was actually 6.3 million and not the 8.7 million they touted until they were exposed. There was no confirmation of how many of the current 9.1 million were previously insured and lost their coverage due to the ACA. In reality there may have been only 5 million newly insured. The total insured may have been well below 8 million by the end of last year.

My premiums have increased 64% since 2013 with higher deductibles and co-payments while I am also forced to subsidize the insurance of others. The president claimed premiums would be reduced $2,500 per family by the Affordable Care Act. The president knew this was not true and deliberately lied to the American people to push for the passage of the act.

The Democrats can be proud of themselves. They gave Obama his signature accomplishment and now the Democrats own it. It has already cost them the Congress and it was a significant factor in costing them the Presidency.

It would have been better for Congress to have allocated an assigned risk pool of funds to assist those who were shut out of the standard insurance markets by pre-existing conditions instead of this giant exercise in absurdity and lunacy. The Democrats had to resort to unconstitutional deception and bribery of reluctant Congresspersons from Nebraska, Louisiana and Michigan to get the law passed. We were lied to again and again and again by this administration.

Jonathan Gruber, one of the plan's major architects confirmed the level of deceit by the Democrats. Hard working tax paying citizens are being forced to subsidize health care for others, meanwhile many have lost their own coverage and are being forced to purchase insurance with higher premiums and higher deductibles and co-payments. Despite Obama's claim it would reduce premiums an average of $2,500.00 per family this year's true numbers of participants will continue to drop, primarily due to the cost. A recent report stated more and more Obamacare recipients cancelled their policies even after being afforded great leniency by the very liberal rules set by this administration.

So we had to totally disrupt health coverage that many were happy with, had to endure a total revision of the healthcare system all for less than 3% of the population of this country. This continues to prove how incompetent this administration is and so ill prepared to govern. This is yet another example of how liberals operate. They will take what they can get at first. Then having gotten their foot in the door they return to press for the rest at a later date in the guise of fairness. Then anyone who objects is waging a war on those beneficiaries, a meme which their media minions is always willing to trumpet. Look no further than this current push for single payer option and the recent movement in California to cover illegal immigrants.

The Democrat Congress and President Obama passed a defective bill and will continue to pay the price for it. The Democrat Congress had to assure Obama got his signature accomplishment. You Democrats now own it lock, stock and barrel.