• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Congress to Send Obamacare Repeal to President

OrphanSlug said:
It does not mean all you think it does.

Putting a veto on his signature legislation is just that, protecting his legislation effort. The only people moved by that veto are those who are already opposed to ACA for whatever reason.

And that concludes that Congressional Republicans forcing Obama's veto is purely a political stunt, there was no expectation that Obama would cave on this. The only gain for Republicans trying for the umpteenth time to repeal ACA is exciting their base.
Click to expand...

I think that's what Beau said in his post.
 
Casper said:
Umm isn't that exactly what the Federal government did, force something on all the States.
Click to expand...

Sure. They do it all the time, and the ACA was definitely an imposition on the states, the minimum standards in particular, although as structured it still provides states with a good bit of autonomy.

Is it your suggestion that Democrats in Congress should have forced more on the states and removed all of their ability to regulate health insurance within their state?
 
JasperL said:
Sure. They do it all the time, and the ACA was definitely an imposition on the states, the minimum standards in particular, although as structured it still provides states with a good bit of autonomy.

Is it your suggestion that Democrats in Congress should have forced more on the states and removed all of their ability to regulate health insurance within their state?
Click to expand...
Nope, what I am saying, is that while some improvement needed to be made to healthcare availability and affordability, what we got did not provide the solution and was Forced upon the American People and punishable by heavy fines (opps, "taxes") that many cannot afford. Sounds like a scam to me. Maybe the next set of reforms will not be so Draconian in nature and simply do what it was intended to don and offer Affordable Healthcare Coverage to those that want it.
 
I see this move by Congressional Republicans as mostly political-oriented. It's designed to give the Republican candidates something they can campaign about...it'll energize the Republican base...and it'll force the Democratic candidates to either throw in with Obama or throw him under the bus. (LOL!! After all that Obama has done, wouldn't it be ironic if his own Party candidates kicked him to the curb?) In either case, it'll be more campaign material for the Republicans.

Actually, I think it's a good thing that the Republicans are getting on the same sheet of music with each other this time. It means they might finally have a chance to effectively combat the usual Democratic campaigning tactics.

As far as Obamacare is concerned, I'm sure that Ryan know that Obamacare isn't going anywhere unless a Republican gets into the Whitehouse. That's what this vote is all about.
 
shrubnose said:
Congress is set to send President Obama a bill this week repealing the Affordable Care Act for the first time since the law's enactment in 2010 - effectively repealing the mandates and taxes at the heart of the law.
Click to expand...

Good on them for this.

Do I think it has any hope of passing the Presidents desk? Not at all.

Do I think simply repealing and nothing else is the proper thing to do long term if it was to happen? No.

However....it is almost impossible to deny that the Republican majority in the House and the Senate has occurred in large part due to the Repeal of Obamacare being one of the central planks that was consistent within the races across the nation. These representatives and senators were elected into office, in large part, due to their constituents displeasure and disdain with Obamacare, and a desire by those voters to both send a message that they do not approve and to give the best effort possible to get rid of it.

The "harm" in passing such a bill is extremely small, and is a much less "waste of time" than other things congresses spends it's sessions doing at times as at least in this case it's directly related to the reason why many of those Senators/Representatives are sitting in their seats.

Yes, "some voters" will notice this. Most likely, Republican voters that have been becoming discouraged and disenfranchised by seeing their elected representatives pledge to fight on certain things on the campaign trail, and then turn around and basically make no real effort once in power. In terms of people "noticing" this in a way that's going to make them UNHAPPY? I have a hard time imagining there's many out there that were on the fence about the Republicans based on their stance on Obamacare that suddenly act differently because they put forward a likely symbolic bill to repeal it.
 
Casper said:
I agree they were a do nothing Congress and hit Cons on that fact hard. That said, the Congress has finally passed a Budget, a short one but none the less a Budget, and they are finally getting the wheels moving forward again. My guess is that when it comes to this Bill they know it will be vetoed, that is not the point, what their goal is to show who supports the Act and who does not and after the elections it is my guess that they will send the Bill to the next President that they are counting on signing off on it and that will be that. Yes there is no assurance that a Repub will win the WH but if they raise enough attention that no matter who is office they will have to face the fact that a large numbers of Americans do not like what they got. I was, and still am, one of those that felt our healthcare system need some major changes, the main one being that Affordable healthcare be available for all Americans, unfortunately that is Not what we got. Most of the policies are worthless unless one has a major health issue and if one is working the premiums for a good policy one could get were no less than one could get on the open market.
Click to expand...

That's really not a fair characterization at all. The policies as a group probably better than individual policies were pre-ACA, and with the minimum standards cover a lot more than many pre-ACA policies that were in fact worthless FOR major health issues, which is when most of us actually NEED insurance. Many didn't cover hospitalization, or capped out at ridiculously low levels, with low lifetime limits. And premiums are affordable for poor people, less so for those with good but not great income. And the big winners were those with preexisting conditions who were just uninsurable except through an employer. So there were clear winners and losers. What's clearly true, however, is most policies for most of us didn't change much if at all. And on the exchanges there is a wide gamut of plans available - from low OOP, relatively high premium, big networks, to high OOP, limited network, essentially catastrophic plans with much lower premiums. Same as before.

What it did do is force people to pay for insurance, often not the insurance they wanted and if they could not afford it they were "fined", brilliant, fine someone that already cannot afford to pay more. The sooner the Act dies the better, there has to be a better alternative. I still have a sneaky suspicion that it was meant to fail and to fix it the only alternative, for some, was a single payer plan, which if done properly is not totally out of the question but the key words are if properly done and we know what the chances of that are.
Click to expand...

The big problem is that's very easy to say and as we see almost impossible to deliver. The GOP has had years to come up with a better alternative and no one has seen it. Our insurance has been broken for decades and Clinton tried reform in the 1990s, we skipped about 15 years and the next effort was the ACA. The problem is to make insurance 'affordable' you really have a couple of options. Somehow brute force lower payouts to hospitals, drug companies and doctors (or maybe do this with the magic of "competition" but with the same result) and those behemoths will pull out all the stops to prevent that from happening because what costs less for us means lower revenues, profits, bonuses for them. The other option is to really limit networks, or really limit covered services. And we see with ACA that when you limit networks or make it hard to get services covered, people hate that too.

We want what we can't have which is our choice of doctor/hospital, unlimited care for virtually any illness, the latest drugs, at affordable prices. No one has managed to find a way to deliver that.
 
JasperL said:
That's really not a fair characterization at all. The policies as a group probably better than individual policies were pre-ACA, and with the minimum standards cover a lot more than many pre-ACA policies that were in fact worthless FOR major health issues, which is when most of us actually NEED insurance. Many didn't cover hospitalization, or capped out at ridiculously low levels, with low lifetime limits. And premiums are affordable for poor people, less so for those with good but not great income. And the big winners were those with preexisting conditions who were just uninsurable except through an employer. So there were clear winners and losers. What's clearly true, however, is most policies for most of us didn't change much if at all. And on the exchanges there is a wide gamut of plans available - from low OOP, relatively high premium, big networks, to high OOP, limited network, essentially catastrophic plans with much lower premiums. Same as before.



The big problem is that's very easy to say and as we see almost impossible to deliver. The GOP has had years to come up with a better alternative and no one has seen it. Our insurance has been broken for decades and Clinton tried reform in the 1990s, we skipped about 15 years and the next effort was the ACA. The problem is to make insurance 'affordable' you really have a couple of options. Somehow brute force lower payouts to hospitals, drug companies and doctors (or maybe do this with the magic of "competition" but with the same result) and those behemoths will pull out all the stops to prevent that from happening because what costs less for us means lower revenues, profits, bonuses for them. The other option is to really limit networks, or really limit covered services. And we see with ACA that when you limit networks or make it hard to get services covered, people hate that too.

We want what we can't have which is our choice of doctor/hospital, unlimited care for virtually any illness, the latest drugs, at affordable prices. No one has managed to find a way to deliver that.[/QUOTE]
I had exactly that for many years, but changes in the insurance industry and what employers were willing to get and pay partly for changed that for good. Deregulate and Open the Market, the problem will cure itself.
Click to expand...
 
Casper said:
Nope, what I am saying, is that while some improvement needed to be made to healthcare availability and affordability, what we got did not provide the solution and was Forced upon the American People and punishable by heavy fines (opps, "taxes") that many cannot afford. Sounds like a scam to me. Maybe the next set of reforms will not be so Draconian in nature and simply do what it was intended to don and offer Affordable Healthcare Coverage to those that want it.
Click to expand...

OK, I'll wait until someone can come up with that plan that is not draconian and delivers the impossible that can nevertheless pass Congress.

The mandate isn't popular, for example, but the problem is you can't solve pre-existing conditions without a mandate. So everyone wants their aunt with a history of breast cancer to be able to get insurance, but she can't get it if she can wait until she gets diagnosed with cancer, then heads to the exchange to buy a policy. She has to be forced to carry insurance while not sick, or else you will destroy the insurance market with mandated coverage of pre-existing conditions.

If you want to lower costs, you have to force behemoth hospitals and/or insurers and/or doctors and/or drug makers to accept lower fees. How can we do that? The entire industrialized world settled on single payer. We don't have the votes for that to get a bill out of a minor committee in Congress and is DOA in the House and Senate. So what's the other option no one has discovered, anywhere in the world?
 
Casper said:
I had exactly that for many years, but changes in the insurance industry and what employers were willing to get and pay partly for changed that for good. Deregulate and Open the Market, the problem will cure itself.
Click to expand...

Good for you, and 50 million or so were uninsured, millions of them uninsurable, and millions more 'insured' with plans that capped out at low levels and would have proved worthless with a real illness. And we also had costs double the rest of the world, and trending higher, with the number of uninsured trending higher.

And saying "deregulate and open the market" isn't a plan. Free markets work because they ration care based on ability to pay, and if someone can't pay they do not get the service. So denying service to the sick, old, poor has to happen for markets to "work." But we will not as a society say to an old person or a minimum wage worker with heart disease or a broken leg - no pay, no service. So how do we cover the poor, sick and old in a 'free market' plan? No country on earth has figured it out. If someone can here, good for them!
 
Zyphlin said:
Good on them for this.

Do I think it has any hope of passing the Presidents desk? Not at all.

Do I think simply repealing and nothing else is the proper thing to do long term if it was to happen? No.

However....it is almost impossible to deny that the Republican majority in the House and the Senate has occurred in large part due to the Repeal of Obamacare being one of the central planks that was consistent within the races across the nation. These representatives and senators were elected into office, in large part, due to their constituents displeasure and disdain with Obamacare, and a desire by those voters to both send a message that they do not approve and to give the best effort possible to get rid of it.

The "harm" in passing such a bill is extremely small, and is a much less "waste of time" than other things congresses spends it's sessions doing at times as at least in this case it's directly related to the reason why many of those Senators/Representatives are sitting in their seats.

Yes, "some voters" will notice this. Most likely, Republican voters that have been becoming discouraged and disenfranchised by seeing their elected representatives pledge to fight on certain things on the campaign trail, and then turn around and basically make no real effort once in power. In terms of people "noticing" this in a way that's going to make them UNHAPPY? I have a hard time imagining there's many out there that were on the fence about the Republicans based on their stance on Obamacare that suddenly act differently because they put forward a likely symbolic bill to repeal it.
Click to expand...


Yeah, this is more of a pre-election positioning move by the Republican party. They all needed a positive motion towards repeal this year to contrast against the Democratic field. The Republicans can now use this vote in their campaigns, banking on the PPACA news in September and October will be even worse this year than it was last year. For that reason look for the President to issue some executive order in August or September changing how some of the onerous mandates are applied. "Vote for Democrats! We protect you from our signature legislation!", and so on.
 
JasperL said:
FWIW, here's an article today about 'selling across state lines' that sums up the regulatory issues. The author is an insurance company executive of some sort so gives an insider's view of the ACA and related stuff on a regular basis:

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2016/01/07/health-insurance-across-state-lines-coercion-or-consent/



And, again, NC and all the other red states can choose the GOP option today, just disband their insurance regulatory regime and declare that any product licensed in any state is approved for sale in NC. For some reason, you think it's a good idea for Congress to impose that choice on all 50 states.
Click to expand...

I know your point. I see your point. I get your point. Your point has nothing to do with what I am saying. Each state has a closed market, which invariably hampers competition and allows prices to rise. The only way to lower costs, and maintain quality of the product, is through open competition. That means allowing individual citizens to purchase across state lines.

If insurance company "C" gets approval from within State "1" they have to meet the requirements of State "1" to be able sell in that state. For instance, if insurance company "A" and "B" are the only ones selling in State "1", then the market is closed and the companies can (without eve trying to collude) adjust their pricing where they are very similar - plus, State "1" makes insurance companies "A" and "B" provide certain guarantees, products, fees to the state and other costs of doing business that State "2" does not make insurance company "C" pay in State "2" which allows insurance company "C" to sell almost the same policy as "A" and "B" but at a reduced price. However, as soon as insurance company "C" gets approval by State "1" to sell in that state, insurance company "C" has to raise the cost of the same policy to people in State "1" that they can sell in State "2" at a lower cost.

Why would I want to buy a policy in State "1" (let's call it California), when I can buy basically the same policy in State "2" (Let's call it South Carolina) that meets all my needs so that I get the same coverage but at a dramatically lower cost to me?

You see? Big government states, that impose huge fees on companies to sell their policies in their states do not want their citizens to be able to buy insurance in any other state, because they (the state government) will loose money. And, that is only one of a multitude of reasons that the right to buy across state lines was not included in the PPACA and the part you keep discussing was, because those Big Government states, are run by the same Democrats that controlled Congress and what was allowed and not allowed in the PPACA. They won't tell you the truth behind their reasons to deny people that right, because they would look like the greedy government people that they are.

Edit: here's some lite reading materials... http://www.naic.org/documents/consumer_state_reg_brief.pdf

Second paragraph, second page:
State regulation of insurance provides a major source of state revenue. In 2000, states collected
more than $10.4 billion in revenues from insurance sources. Of this amount, $880 million—
roughly 8.4 percent—went to regulate the business of insurance while the remaining $9.6 billion
went to state general funds for other purposes.
Click to expand...

9.6 BILLION dollars. Do you see now why the states do not want you or me to be able buy somewhere else? They could and would lose Millions if not Billions of dollars in revenue.
 
Last edited:
JasperL said:
Good for you, and 50 million or so were uninsured, millions of them uninsurable, and millions more 'insured' with plans that capped out at low levels and would have proved worthless with a real illness. And we also had costs double the rest of the world, and trending higher, with the number of uninsured trending higher.

And saying "deregulate and open the market" isn't a plan. Free markets work because they ration care based on ability to pay, and if someone can't pay they do not get the service. So denying service to the sick, old, poor has to happen for markets to "work." But we will not as a society say to an old person or a minimum wage worker with heart disease or a broken leg - no pay, no service. So how do we cover the poor, sick and old in a 'free market' plan? No country on earth has figured it out. If someone can here, good for them!
Click to expand...
So the current plan is unacceptable and does not provide what was promised, what we had did not do so either and since no one has any brilliant idea to correct the problem we are just supposed to keep the failure we have now? There are plenty of smart people out there and if we actually apply ourselves to the task I am sure we could come up with something that works for Most People. I use that term, Most People, because the simply fact is nothing anyone can come with will be the best thing for All People, that is a pipe dream that will never come true. As I said what most want is Affordable Healthcare, that can be made up of many different plans and methods of coverage, but what we do not need is the government fining people for not going along with their mandate, that simply sticks in the craw for far too many Americans. Want to subsidize healthcare for the very poor, ok, but find a better way to fund it, want to allow people to shop the entire market, that is fine also, allow the market to compete and reduce the costs for the buyer. Want to force people to buy something they do not want, nope, as Un-American as it gets and is doomed to eventually being killed off. Mark my word: Obamacare is a terminally ill program that is due to die in the next few years, so maybe the best thing we can do is start thinking hard on how to replace it with something that actually fulfills the needs of Most Americans.
 
Beaudreaux said:
I know your point. I see your point. I get your point. Your point has nothing to do with what I am saying. Each state has a closed market, which invariably hampers competition and allows prices to rise. The only way to lower costs, and maintain quality of the product, is through open competition. That means allowing individual citizens to purchase across state lines.

If insurance company "C" gets approval from within State "1" they have to meet the requirements of State "1" to be able sell in that state....

[edited for brevity not because I don't accept your scenario. It's fine.]
Click to expand...

OK, but really all you're saying is you want Congress to override the legislatures, governors and voters in all 50 states when it comes to health insurance policies, and effectively deregulate health insurance products nationwide.

And based on the next paragraph, you want Congress to repeal what are effectively taxes on insurance products, nationwide, and so make fiscal (tax and spending choices) for the 50 states and therefore override the will of the legislatures and governors and voters on their tax and spending choices.

It's fine that you have policy preferences and would like to see them enacted where you live, but I don't see why you think it's therefore appropriate for all of the 50 states to be forced by Congress to accept a lowest common denominator regulatory regime on a product as important as health insurance, or for all of the 50 states to shift their tax burden to a regime that is chosen for you by voters in whatever state becomes the lowest common denominator on taxes and fees.

In this scenario, ALL the choices about insurance regulation and taxes will be made for you and 49 other states by voters and legislators in....Wyoming, or Idaho, or Montana. Your state is now forced by Congress to be subject to whatever provisions lobbyists and big money can jam through corrupt/pliable legislators half way across the country, and there is nothing you or your state can do about it. So if some fly by night piece of crap firm gets registered in N. Dakota, they're eligible to sell policies in NC, even if their finances are a joke and there's a better than even chance your residents will be left holding a big fat nothing when they get sick and need care. Not a damn thing NC can do under your regime. If NC ELECTS to accept that, GREAT! The insured left holding the bag can hold the insurance regulators and state government accountable next time they vote, etc. In your world, that hands off regime is imposed on NC and there is nothing anyone can do because those decisions are now made in N. Dakota, and you can't vote in N. Dakota.

And you mention the "Big Government states" run by "Democrats" but every single red state run by REPUBLICANS still regulates insurance within their borders. There is nothing stopping the 30 or so red states from disbanding their insurance regulatory apparatus and just opening the market to any and all sellers of any insurance policy sold anywhere, but they don't do that for the reasons I just outlined above.

Edit: here's some lite reading materials... http://www.naic.org/documents/consumer_state_reg_brief.pdf

Second paragraph, second page:

9.6 BILLION dollars. Do you see now why the states do not want you or me to be able buy somewhere else? They could and would lose Millions if not Billions of dollars in revenue.
Click to expand...

Again, so what? States get to decide how to tax and spend. It's allowed.
 
JasperL said:
OK, but really all you're saying is you want Congress to override the legislatures, governors and voters in all 50 states when it comes to health insurance policies, and effectively deregulate health insurance products nationwide.

And based on the next paragraph, you want Congress to repeal what are effectively taxes on insurance products, nationwide, and so make fiscal (tax and spending choices) for the 50 states and therefore override the will of the legislatures and governors and voters on their tax and spending choices.

It's fine that you have policy preferences and would like to see them enacted where you live, but I don't see why you think it's therefore appropriate for all of the 50 states to be forced by Congress to accept a lowest common denominator regulatory regime on a product as important as health insurance, or for all of the 50 states to shift their tax burden to a regime that is chosen for you by voters in whatever state becomes the lowest common denominator on taxes and fees.

In this scenario, ALL the choices about insurance regulation and taxes will be made for you and 49 other states by voters and legislators in....Wyoming, or Idaho, or Montana. Your state is now forced by Congress to be subject to whatever provisions lobbyists and big money can jam through corrupt/pliable legislators half way across the country, and there is nothing you or your state can do about it. So if some fly by night piece of crap firm gets registered in N. Dakota, they're eligible to sell policies in NC, even if their finances are a joke and there's a better than even chance your residents will be left holding a big fat nothing when they get sick and need care. Not a damn thing NC can do under your regime. If NC ELECTS to accept that, GREAT! The insured left holding the bag can hold the insurance regulators and state government accountable next time they vote, etc. In your world, that hands off regime is imposed on NC and there is nothing anyone can do because those decisions are now made in N. Dakota, and you can't vote in N. Dakota.

And you mention the "Big Government states" run by "Democrats" but every single red state run by REPUBLICANS still regulates insurance within their borders. There is nothing stopping the 30 or so red states from disbanding their insurance regulatory apparatus and just opening the market to any and all sellers of any insurance policy sold anywhere, but they don't do that for the reasons I just outlined above.



Again, so what? States get to decide how to tax and spend. It's allowed.
Click to expand...

Never mind.
 
Casper said:
So the current plan is unacceptable and does not provide what was promised, what we had did not do so either and since no one has any brilliant idea to correct the problem we are just supposed to keep the failure we have now? There are plenty of smart people out there and if we actually apply ourselves to the task I am sure we could come up with something that works for Most People. I use that term, Most People, because the simply fact is nothing anyone can come with will be the best thing for All People, that is a pipe dream that will never come true. As I said what most want is Affordable Healthcare, that can be made up of many different plans and methods of coverage, but what we do not need is the government fining people for not going along with their mandate, that simply sticks in the craw for far too many Americans. Want to subsidize healthcare for the very poor, ok, but find a better way to fund it, want to allow people to shop the entire market, that is fine also, allow the market to compete and reduce the costs for the buyer. Want to force people to buy something they do not want, nope, as Un-American as it gets and is doomed to eventually being killed off. Mark my word: Obamacare is a terminally ill program that is due to die in the next few years, so maybe the best thing we can do is start thinking hard on how to replace it with something that actually fulfills the needs of Most Americans.
Click to expand...

What we had then, and what we have now, both worked, just primarily for the health insurance companies. Compare profit and CEO compensation pre PPACA and now and see if you can find any significant differences.
 
Beaudreaux said:
Never mind.
Click to expand...

You keep saying that but won't tell me what part I'm missing. I get your example, and addressed it.

What do you expect must happen in your regime other than deregulating the insurance market nationwide, which means the lowest common denominator regulatory and tax regime imposed by corrupt or pliable legislators in Wyoming or somewhere is therefore imposed by Congress on the other 49 states? If that's what you're for, say so, we'll disagree and move on. If not, then what part of what I said isn't correct?
 
Montecresto said:
What we had then, and what we have now, both worked, just primarily for the health insurance companies. Compare profit and CEO compensation pre PPACA and now and see if you can find any significant differences.
Click to expand...

Insurance Companies rarely lose money, no matter what propaganda they may put out. I do not see that ever changing. When people talk about how cheap their insurance rate is I ask them to add up all the different insurance policies they have and pay for, Home, Health, Dental, Vision, Automobile, Boats, Planes and Submarines and then get back to me on how "cheap" it is for them, it can be very eye opening. For myself, it is my largest overall expense.
 
Casper said:
Most of the policies are worthless unless one has a major health issue and if one is working the premiums for a good policy one could get were no less than one could get on the open market.
Click to expand...

If you've got insurance, you can't pay more than $6-7K out of pocket for health expenses in a given year (for the skimpiest plans; many have lower out-of-pocket maximums). That might seem like a lot of financial exposure, but it's also a lot of financial protection. If you have a real medical issue arise, you can easily rack up medical expenses way, way in excess of that.

JasperL said:
Sure. They do it all the time, and the ACA was definitely an imposition on the states, the minimum standards in particular, although as structured it still provides states with a good bit of autonomy.
Click to expand...

In particular, the essential health benefits package is selected by the state.

Casper said:
JasperL said:
We want what we can't have which is our choice of doctor/hospital, unlimited care for virtually any illness, the latest drugs, at affordable prices. No one has managed to find a way to deliver that.
Click to expand...
I had exactly that for many years, but changes in the insurance industry and what employers were willing to get and pay partly for changed that for good. Deregulate and Open the Market, the problem will cure itself.
Click to expand...

The fact of the matter is that in a competitive market, premium is always going to generally be inversely correlated with network size and benefit generosity. The reason is simple: broader networks and richer benefits mean more money being paid out in claims, which has to be made up with commensurately higher premiums.

You can buy broad network, platinum plans in the exchanges now. Most people don't, however, because they're naturally the most expensive. That's not a failing, that's how markets work: you've got a range of options to choose from, from low end to high end, priced accordingly.

The world you're describing, in which those features that add costs are not priced accordingly, is not a market. Quite the opposite.


Beaudreaux said:
I know your point. I see your point. I get your point. Your point has nothing to do with what I am saying. Each state has a closed market, which invariably hampers competition and allows prices to rise. The only way to lower costs, and maintain quality of the product, is through open competition. That means allowing individual citizens to purchase across state lines.
Click to expand...

What you don't seem to be getting is that this actually isn't true. Deregulation, i.e. stripping customers of consumer protections and eliminating product standards, doesn't "maintain quality of the product" (essentially by definition), and to the extent it "lowers costs" it does so by kicking people who need services out of the pool or strictly curtailing their consumption of services. Hardly some panacea--it doesn't do anything to actually go after the actual drivers of costs. It goes back to the shell game of offloading risks to somebody else and not dealing with the problem.

But more importantly, entering a new insurance market if you're an insurer is hard. You need local scale to negotiate with health care providers and by definition when you're entering the market you don't have that local scale. (Start-ups under the ACA--the co-ops-- entered markets in states all around the country two years ago and the results have not been great, though that's partly due to Congressional sabotage.) As Jasper already pointed out, Georgia tried opening their doors to out-of-state insurers a few years ago and nobody came. The fact that a payer offers a competitive product in one state is no guarantee that they can successfully offer it in another one.

What matters with insurance is where you're buying it, not where they're selling it. In the same way, if you were looking at Manhattan real estate owned by a property company headquartered in New York and Manhattan real estate owned by a property company headquartered in Topeka, the latter isn't going to be offering you a condo in Manhattan at Topeka prices just because that's where they happen to be headquartered. What matters is where the actual condo is and what the local market looks like. And in Manhattan that means it'll be expensive.

Stripping people of consumer protections, helping insurers get out of paying for as much care as we can, and bringing back pre-existing condition lockouts isn't the answer to tackling rising costs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom