Arbo
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2011
- Messages
- 10,395
- Reaction score
- 2,744
- Location
- Colorado
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
No, I'm making the point that some people, like TD, were given every advantage in life to help them succeed, whereas many other people didn't have such advantages given to them.
Many are born to disadvantage, and of those, some overcome and better themselves. And some of those born to affluence throw it all way. So continuing the 'we must take care of these disadvantaged people' really screams of racism.
As to Obamacare...
You have to understand, however, the intention of this 'law'. It has very little to do with providing affordable health care - by every estimation, it will expand costs over the current system. First, the 'fine' that people pay is a joke. It's actually MUCH MUCH cheaper just to pay the 'fine' than to buy ANY type of insurance at all. (the fine doesn't go to the insurance company, by the way!) Its much cheaper to just pay the fine and then, when you're sick, show up to a hospital and demand 'insurance' (which, at that point, isn't really insurance at all - it's forcing a business to pay for some random person's medical bills! Someone who has never taken part in the risk pool and thus can fit an actuarial analysis which allows the insurance company to adjust rates and allocate resources over time appropriately.)
This is obviously impossible to sustain. The law was designed this way. Ultimately, people would realize that it's cheaper / better just to pay the 'fine' and would not buy insurance. These same people would show up and demand their care be paid for when they're sick, despite never having contributed to the insurance pool. The insurance companies would respond just they way they have over the last 2 years - raising required capital by increasing the premiums on those who still pay for insurance (projections are an average of 12-15% per year premium increases, indefinitely).
In the short term, businesses and individuals will respond by reducing benefits and/or increasing the amount of out-of-pocket expenses (increased co-pays, 90% benefits, higher deductibles, etc) to keep the premiums as low as possible. This is where we are now, and the result is that people who pay for insurance are getting less care and paying more for it. This is because, when faced with a medical problem, for example, that might require surgery, people who once went ahead with treatment with a $500 deductible are thinking twice before committing to treatment that demands a $2500 deductible and then only covers 90% of costs after that.
In the long run, most people, finding traditional insurance unaffordable, will find themselves dropped by their employers in favor of the 'exchanges'. Those who can still afford insurance will find their policies costing in the range of a 'cadillac plan' and then be taxed to tarnation based on the cost of their policy, forcing even more into the state plans.
This law is NOT about insurance, It's about control and ultimately ensuring that no one can get anything more than anyone else regardless of input. The goal of this law is to achieve this by bankrupting the insurance companies so that the gov't will then be in a position to say 'well, we tried, but those greedy insurance companies wouldn't play ball - our only option now is a socialist, single payer national system' (the same system failing all over the world).
Worse, since the entire thing is legislated to be within budget, there will be no choice but to ration care. We've already seen the overtures the democrats have made in this regard. Already there is POLICY IN PLACE to limit care to the elderly (who by the way paid their entire lives for after-65 health insurance = medicare) and the very young. The first nod came when the Obama administration SLASHED reimbursement to cardiologists and payment for cardiology procedures a couple years ago, thus reducing the resources available to the patients of cardiologists, who by the way, tend to be of advanced age. Now the focus is on the very young: newborns and young children, even fetuses. When Obama tries to force insurance companies to provide free contraceptive care to patients such that everyone would get full resources WITHOUT COPAY, most people think its only about the pill. Its also about pre-natal screening and providing for free abortion services (again, without copay to encourage the procedure) especially for persons likely to have a 'bad-baby'.
The implications of this 'law' are so tremendous and the effects would be so wide-spread and ultimately draconian that, in their fruition, they would literally dictate life and death (yes, there ARE death panels) by dictating what services are covered vs not. Worse, the law dis-incentivizes doctors from providing care for you through the IPAB (independent payment advisory board) which dictates what services are reimbursed and at what rate. Want to stop people over 65 from getting a bypass surgery? Don't pay for it! Worse, this IPAB (unlike the medicare advisory board) un unanswerable to Congress! There is no recourse to their dictates. The people who set this whole thing up have so little regard for the individual that they refer to patients not as 'people' or 'covered life' (like an insurance co), but as 'units'. The dehuminization in this crime-of-a-law is so complete that you are no longer 'Bill Jones, father, son, husband, construction worker, etc' but 'unit xxx-xx-xxxx'.
This law is a raw power grab aimed at inserting gov't into our lives in an unprecedented way. Anyone who understands it and has the slightest respect for the concept of the individual, could not possibly support it.