Question I've always had about ObamaCare....

speed dawg

Master Don Juan
Joined
Jun 9, 2006
Messages
4,766
Reaction score
1,235
Location
The Dirty South
If they were so concerned about people paying for ObamaCare in order for the math to work out, why didn't they mandate that big companies offer it? From what I understand, companies with employees under 15 are exempt, and obviously bigger companies are exempt (my company has 200+ and they don't offer it). So obviously they just want smaller companies to do it, but not the small-EST. I guess they also thought some people would opt out of their companies plan in favor of OC.

I don't know, doesn't make sense to me, but I admittedly don't know much about it.
 

Stagger Lee

Master Don Juan
Joined
Sep 7, 2009
Messages
2,161
Reaction score
138
The real end goal is to get rid of privately owned businesses and private property lol.
 

Tenacity

Banned
Joined
Jun 23, 2014
Messages
3,926
Reaction score
2,194
You aren't the only one that doesn't understand Obamacare, I don't understand this thing either and neither does majority of the Politicians that voted for it. The entire thing is a mess and all I know is that my private plan has increased by 20% - 25% since this crap started. Plus people have been losing their provider(s) and Obama said that wouldn't happen.

I mean it's just with all of the other problems we have in this country (such as how the hell to pay for Social Security and Medicare), they want to shove this crap through without dealing with the crap that was already passed through.

The entire thing that pisses me off with Politicians is that they take advantage of naive voters, who want every fvcking benefit possible (lower taxes, higher domestic spending, more military, bailouts, free healthcare, free education, free cell phones) and then just adding the shyt to the National Debt so that other Generations will have to pay for it.

All they do is kick the can down the road, and I'm paying all of this fvcking money into my Social Security Retirement Account...so in 36 years when I'm 67 I better DAMN WELL be getting my checks or it will be hell to pay.
 

Tictac

Banned
Joined
Jul 28, 2009
Messages
3,689
Reaction score
1,256
Location
North America, probably an airport
Legislation to make health insurance portable and available to non-employees along with legislation to require health insurers to cover and write policies for pre-existing conditions would have accomplished virtually all that the ACA does.
Republicans proposed this many times ahead of ACA's passage.

But our doofus of a President had to have his 'signature legislation' and big government Dems liked the control they got of insurers, providers (doctors and hospitals) and health care insurance policy holders.

So we have a multi-trillion dollar leviathan.
 

Francisco d'Anconia

Master Don Juan
Joined
Jul 10, 2003
Messages
15,502
Reaction score
63
Location
Galt's Gulch
The worse thing is that ACA has nothing to do with actual health care. Insurance isn't health care. Blue Cross has nothing to do with setting your kid's broken arm.

Ask actual health care providers what is most difficult about providing health care and they will tell you it is dealing with insurance companies and government programs (both are the benefactors of ACA). The cost of the administrative burden of these systems alone makes health care unaffordable.

Ask doctors how much they would charge you for a standard procedure if you were to pay is some fashion that side stepped the insurance company/medicaid song and dance and you'd be surprised at how much can be saved.
 

Stagger Lee

Master Don Juan
Joined
Sep 7, 2009
Messages
2,161
Reaction score
138
What I never could understand about healthcare is say your bill is priced $300 for this visit but HMO (health insurance agreed price) price is $60. Or your hospital stay bill is $12,000, insurance agreed amount is $1500. The billing is outrageous and doesn't make a lot of sense.
 

Bible_Belt

Master Don Juan
Joined
Jul 27, 2005
Messages
17,083
Reaction score
5,719
Age
48
Location
midwestern cow field 40
I would get a Med card and basically free everything, and I haven't even gone to sign up for one yet...which is illegal. My beef with Obamacare is that I don't want to be on welfare, and yet this law actually makes it illegal not to join the welfare-healthcare state. I think this is the first time in history that it has been illegal to not be on welfare.

And the Supreme Court justified the individual mandate as a tax? I don't have a job, wtf are you taxing? I'm just sitting here doing nothing, exactly what is being taxed here? The air I breathe?
 

zekko

Master Don Juan
Joined
Aug 6, 2009
Messages
16,067
Reaction score
8,913
speed dawg said:
If they were so concerned about people paying for ObamaCare in order for the math to work out, why didn't they mandate that big companies offer it?
There's no such thing as "ObamaCare", meaning that there is no such government insurance called ObamaCare that you can buy. There are only private insurance policies that you can buy - but if you qualify (don't make enough money), the government subsidizes it (basically pays the insurance company to keep the premiums lower).

The government requires the bigger companies to provide regular health insurance to their employees. If not, the individual is required to buy it for themselves. Individual (or even worse, family) health insurance policies are ridiculously expensive. Something really does need to be done.

I recently read that the ObamaCare policies will be going up in price in the next few years, at a faster rate than regular health insurance policies, which grow at a faster rate than general inflation.
 

taiyuu_otoko

Master Don Juan
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
5,358
Reaction score
3,999
Location
象外
Any time the government gets involved in anything, the price goes up and it gets more complicated.

If only because there are more layers of bureaucracy, but most likely the MASSIVE layers of graft (mostly legal) all in between.
 

Too Many Women?

If you currently have too many women chasing you, calling you, harassing you, knocking on your door at 2 o'clock in the morning... then I have the simple solution for you.

Just read my free ebook 22 Rules for Massive Success With Women and do the opposite of what I recommend.

This will quickly drive all women away from you.

And you will be able to relax and to live your life in peace and quiet.

Tenacity

Banned
Joined
Jun 23, 2014
Messages
3,926
Reaction score
2,194
While my approach might have been "harsh," I think the best way to approach the health insurance situation would have been the following:

- Try to reduce the actual cost of healthcare so more people can afford it out of pocket using discount cards. I have a hard time figuring out what the cost of something is at my Doctor or Dentist, they just tell you that you need XYZ and schedule a damn appointment. I want to know the prices, procedures, etc. This will allow people to shop.

- Allow for shopping of health insurance across state lines which creates competition which causes innovation to reduce down premium rates.

- The people that can't get approved for a health insurance plan, allow THOSE PEOPLE to be covered by the Government through a Government plan such as Medicaid. Or, for people with health insurance that the Insurance company screws them over at the last minute saying they won't cover a procedure, allow those people to be grandfathered into Medicaid as long as they can prove they actually had insurance.

- The people that qualify for a regular health insurance plan, that choose to not get one (because you know, getting sick isn't something that would "ever" happen to them), then that's their a.ss, let them go bankrupt if they get into a serious situation. It's nobody's fault but their own.

All Obamacare does is mandate that health insurance companies take on EVERYBODY, and in trying to balance out the cost of insuring everybody (including those with diseases who need it the most), the regulation requires EVERYBODY (including those that will use it rarely) to become insured.

The issue is that it doesn't balance out, that's why premiums have increased.
 

Bible_Belt

Master Don Juan
Joined
Jul 27, 2005
Messages
17,083
Reaction score
5,719
Age
48
Location
midwestern cow field 40
My girlfriend's birth control is the "nuva ring." Holy fvcking sh!t is this thing expensive. Without insurance, they are $125-150, and that's every month. Even with insurance, they are still like $80-90. The best price I can find is $40, ordered illegally from Canada.

The idea of birth control being too expensive to afford is just retarded. I'm not a huge fan of social welfare, but I still think we all win when everyone has affordable birth control. Unwanted kids grow up on welfare and end up in jail. Preventing just one of those lives would save enough money to buy birth control for thousands of women.
 

backbreaker

Master Don Juan
Joined
Apr 24, 2002
Messages
11,573
Reaction score
572
Location
monrovia, CA
My insurance doesn't cover my anti depressants. Lexapro which is the only thing I take is 140 a month. **** is worth it though. Even with insurance it's like 95 a month
 

Bible_Belt

Master Don Juan
Joined
Jul 27, 2005
Messages
17,083
Reaction score
5,719
Age
48
Location
midwestern cow field 40
My gf's on Nexium, too. It comes out in generic next month. The active ingredient can be ordered in 50-gal drums from China for the price of one month's bottle of pills.

If I were in the position of having to pay for pills, I would be very tempted to cook up my own sh!t - Breaking Bad style.
 

taiyuu_otoko

Master Don Juan
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
5,358
Reaction score
3,999
Location
象外
Bible_Belt said:
My girlfriend's birth control is the "nuva ring." Holy fvcking sh!t is this thing expensive. Without insurance, they are $125-150, and that's every month. Even with insurance, they are still like $80-90. The best price I can find is $40, ordered illegally from Canada.

The idea of birth control being too expensive to afford is just retarded. I'm not a huge fan of social welfare, but I still think we all win when everyone has affordable birth control. Unwanted kids grow up on welfare and end up in jail. Preventing just one of those lives would save enough money to buy birth control for thousands of women.
That's the thing. birth control, pregnancy, vision care, dental care, these are things we ASSUME should be included with insurance, but they're not really "insurable" events.

From a purely technical standpoint, you only buy insurance to protect you against something you DON'T WANT to happen. And it's only cheap if it RARELY DOES happen.

As soon as insurance starts to cover things people PLAN TO HAPPEN, that's when it starts getting expensive, especially when everybody is pooled into the same plan.

The way health care is today (it's not even called health insurance), if CAR INSURANCE were the same, we'd be expecting car insurance to cover oil changes, new tires, etc.

You may argue that since health is an issue to everybody (not everybody drives, for example) it should be paid for by everybody.

After all, we're all human, we're all going to get sick, and we're all going to die, and it's going to cost some serious cash.

The ONLY REASON any kind of socialized health plan (or call it whatever you want) can exist is that EVERYBODY somehow believes they'll get more out of the system than they put in.

Which is mathematically impossible.

The BEST CASE scenario is that everybody gets out EXACTLY what they put in.

In which case there should be ZERO SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE, as everybody can just pay for their own.

HERE'S THE HUGE PARADOX FEW UNDERSTAND

If there was NO health care, and everybody had to pay everything out of pocket, it would also be mathematically impossible for things to be too expensive.

If anybody sold anything that was too expensive, they would go out of business, since nobody could afford what they were selling.

Competition between providers would drive costs down, just like they do with things that are NOT covered by any insurance.

Like eye surgery for example. Out of pocket, and it's WAY cheaper than it was ten years ago.

Open Heart Surgery, on the other hand, covered by insurance, and WAY more expensive than it was ten years ago.

AND eye surgery has gotten more technically advanced, moreso than open heart surgery.

HEALTH COVERAGE at its core, is political issue, and is just another things that politicians promise to idiot voters (that they can never deliver), who believe it, while huge corporations make out like bandits. (like they always do.)

The Entire Affordable Care Act Was Driven By The Medical Industrial Complex. Designed Only To Squeeze More Money Out Of Gullible Voters.
 

Too Many Women?

If you currently have too many women chasing you, calling you, harassing you, knocking on your door at 2 o'clock in the morning... then I have the simple solution for you.

Just read my free ebook 22 Rules for Massive Success With Women and do the opposite of what I recommend.

This will quickly drive all women away from you.

And you will be able to relax and to live your life in peace and quiet.

LiveFreeX

Banned
Joined
Mar 10, 2010
Messages
2,561
Reaction score
512
Location
The Wacky Races
If there was NO health care, and everybody had to pay everything out of pocket, it would also be mathematically impossible for things to be too expensive.
If there was NO money, it would also be mathematically impossible.

Why Americans even bother with their own health care system is beyond me. Move down to Mexico. I used to buy my asthma puffers down there for $4, the same thing in Canada cost $75. They can do this because the patents on some drugs have run out and some factories keep producing those drugs at a seriously discounted rate. Just because a drug loses its patents after a certain number of years, doesn't necessarily mean its bad. Health care is likely the most over inflated industry in greedy capitalist countries.

If I was under a pay system, I would buy a 30k house, south of the border and use their system with doctors who care about more than a paycheck. Going to the dentist in Mexico might run you like 20 or 30 bucks for BRACES. The last time I was down there, everybody and their mother had braces on and ultra clean teeth. People have dentistry clinics setup in their homes and small offices. The medical services are comparable to US hospitals and the Mexicans have govt coverage.

Instead of covering everything in terms of dollars, there should be medical 'rationing' and you should be granted 10 free visits to the doctor every year. If you use those arbitrarily then its your own fault when something huge comes up and you've burned through all your uses. It would stop fat/addicts/welfare/hypochondriacs from using the medical system too much.
 
Top