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Obamacare: Is a $2,000 deductible 'affordable?'

But it isn't opinion on my part. Simple fact being:

Read the fly leaf on the book "War and Peace"
Read the book "War and Peace'

Read the flyleaf on "Herman's Great Adventure"
Read the book "Herman's Great Adventure"

Does the difference make it's self known? :wink:

Those are works of art, they are literature, completely different from a piece of legislation. I can't help you understand a piece of art without you reading it or showing it to you, but I can present you with a sheet or two of information that accurately describes the details of a mortgage.

Again, you miss the mark. Wildly might I add.

And yes, your comment that small bills don't require much reading to understand is pure opinion. It's nothing but opinion. It's not wrong simply because it's an opinion, but an opinion it remains none the less. Maybe the problem is you don't understand what an opinion is?
 
Save it, you'll never convince me that I need a nanny state to help in anything. :coffeepap

Not until you need care you can't get. :coffepap
 
Those are works of art, they are literature, completely different from a piece of legislation. I can't help you understand a piece of art without you reading it or showing it to you, but I can present you with a sheet or two of information that accurately describes the details of a mortgage.

Again, you miss the mark. Wildly might I add.

And yes, your comment that small bills don't require much reading to understand is pure opinion. It's nothing but opinion. It's not wrong simply because it's an opinion, but an opinion it remains none the less. Maybe the problem is you don't understand what an opinion is?

Actually, your previous posts were intelligent, if a little misguided IMO. This one, well, slides close to the edge.

Sorry, if one can't differentiate between the importance of a small bill, and the importance of the ACA, then there isn't much I can do to help.

Have a good night. :)
 
Exactly, I've read a few sources on the bill. What couldn't I have learned about the bill by reading a few sources or the bills summary? What could I not learn through this method? Where's the hidden part that I could not possibly now unless I read the actual text of the bill?

I have no idea what you could or couldn't have learned. You could learn what the bill actually says by reading it.
 
It's not changing the subject. It's pointing out that preventative medicine is cheaper than emergency care. I could have just as easily used blood pressure medication vs treatment after a stroke. Point remains the same regardless.

BTW, any time you ask if it's you, it's a safe assumption that, yes, yes it is you.

Yes it is. No one goes to the emergency room to get birth control pills just like nobody goes to the emergency room to get blood pressure medication.

So what changes in the system again regarding the uninsured, beside paying more for their emergency care?
 
Well at least a little bit of it is starting to sink in for you...

I didn't say I agreed with you, I said your posts were intelligent.

I can appreciate when someone takes time and thought to put together a good post, regardless of the subject matter or lean. :wink:
 
Yes it is. No one goes to the emergency room to get birth control pills just like nobody goes to the emergency room to get blood pressure medication.

Sigh...

Of course no ones going to the emergency room for blood pressure medication, that's the entire point of it. Preventative care is cheaper than emergency room care. I've put it as simply as possible. I can't help you out beyond that.
 
Sigh...

Of course no ones going to the emergency room for blood pressure medication, that's the entire point of it. Preventative care is cheaper than emergency room care. I've put it as simply as possible. I can't help you out beyond that.

Sigh ....

That was your example not mine. I can't help it if you don't even remember what you post.
 
Sigh ....

That was your example not mine. I can't help it if you don't even remember what you post.

And your response was "nobody goes to the emergency room to get blood pressure medication", which shows me that you don't even understand the argument. High blood pressure can cause a stroke. Or an aneurysm. Compare the cost of subsidizing someone's health insurance which aides them in going to the doctor more often, and lets them catch things like high blood pressure, and provides them reasonable access to blood pressure medication vs. the cost of them being ignorant of their condition and having an aneurism. Or a stroke. Even you can figure out which is cheaper. Hope fully. But you're prolly still scratching your head saying noone goes to the emergency room for blood pressure medication.
 
Many are going to see that happen under government mismanagement....:coffeepap

Nonsense. The sky will not fall. More will likely get more than were.
 
And your response was "nobody goes to the emergency room to get blood pressure medication", which shows me that you don't even understand the argument. High blood pressure can cause a stroke. Or an aneurysm. Compare the cost of subsidizing someone's health insurance which aides them in going to the doctor more often, and lets them catch things like high blood pressure, and provides them reasonable access to blood pressure medication vs. the cost of them being ignorant of their condition and having an aneurism. Or a stroke. Even you can figure out which is cheaper. Hope fully. But you're prolly still scratching your head saying noone goes to the emergency room for blood pressure medication.

Keep dancing. Why is it so hard for you to admit what you said instead of trying to weasel out of it? You made a dumb analogy. Gee that never happens.
 
Obama care takes choice away. Some people preferred a low deductible and frequent doc visits.

Some people prefer to use more healthcare resources and pay less for it? Interesting..
 
Yes it is. No one goes to the emergency room to get birth control pills just like nobody goes to the emergency room to get blood pressure medication.

So what changes in the system again regarding the uninsured, beside paying more for their emergency care?

I work in a hospital and I can positively say that people DO come to the ER to get preventative maintenance drugs. They come for the sniffles. They come for back pain. They come for little rashes and stomach aches. They come for headaches. People come to the ER for everything because they can't be refused until they are seen and verified to be at least medically stable. Medicaid pays for them to come to the ER. Many doctors won't take medicaid patients because the payments are too low so they can't get primary care doctors. So they come to the ER.
 
You hope that is the case. If so, it'd be a first in centralized health care.

Nonsense. You misinterpret other such healthcare systems. You accept propaganda on the subject. They spend less than we do. And have better access. However, we don't have that type of system.
 
I work in a hospital and I can positively say that people DO come to the ER to get preventative maintenance drugs. They come for the sniffles. They come for back pain. They come for little rashes and stomach aches. They come for headaches. People come to the ER for everything because they can't be refused until they are seen and verified to be at least medically stable. Medicaid pays for them to come to the ER. Many doctors won't take medicaid patients because the payments are too low so they can't get primary care doctors. So they come to the ER.

But what they don't come for are things like birth control pills and blood pressure medicine as these require more than just symptoms to diagnose. If they didn't you wouldn't need a prescription for them.
 
Nonsense. You misinterpret other such healthcare systems. You accept propaganda on the subject. They spend less than we do. And have better access. However, we don't have that type of system.

Obamacare is not a centralized healthcare system, it is a hodge podge cobbled together mandatory mess. I think the ultimate goal is single payer and that is what the dem's should have been honest about and proposed. I am open to the idea but we needed an honest debate on how much it would cost and how it would be financed as in which taxes go up and by how much. What we have now is gov bureaucracy at its worst.
 
But what they don't come for are things like birth control pills and blood pressure medicine as these require more than just symptoms to diagnose. If they didn't you wouldn't need a prescription for them.

No, no.. they absolutely do COME for them.. I never said they get them, but they do come for them. We've had people who ran out of refills whose primary care doc wouldn't see them due to bills/not having open appointments call ambulances to take them to the ER and demand refills. I would not say it is unlikely we've given out birth control and bp med prescriptions. I'll ask the ER director next time I see him how often they do things like that.
 
Obamacare is not a centralized healthcare system, it is a hodge podge cobbled together mandatory mess. I think the ultimate goal is single payer and that is what the dem's should have been honest about and proposed. I am open to the idea but we needed an honest debate on how much it would cost and how it would be financed as in which taxes go up and by how much. What we have now is gov bureaucracy at its worst.

As someone who works in healthcare, I will say there is good and bad in the Affordable Healthcare Act. If you wanted to make the absolute minimum amount of changes to our healthcare system and get everyone access to insurance (note I did not say healthcare, I said insurance), then I suppose it is not the worst thing in the world. It does very, very little to address overall cost issues. It will likely make insurance for healthy people more expensive since it caps the cost of high risk patients' insurance. It caps profit/overhead margins for insurance companies which I think is a shortsighted idea. It sounds nice that they have to spend 80% on healthcare costs, but I think this'll be an incentive for them to spend more money so they can have larger nominal profits rather than keeping costs down. The healthcare exchanges are a good idea, but they should have just made a national system instead of allowing states to do their own thing. This'll create confusion. More confusion is a bad thing in an already confusing industry. Most of all, the main problems with our healthcare system are not addressed. That being we tie our health insurance to employment and that the administrative costs of our healthcare systems are far too high largely BECAUSE of the fact that we have 1000 insurance plans and companies whose rules we have to know and follow in addition to The Joint Commission, CMMC, DHEC, and the other regulatory bodies we have to contend with.

I think, if we are going to stay with the private insurance model, we should be incentivising companies to take what they are spending on healthcare costs and just give it back to their employees so they can get health insurance on their own. With more people in the health insurance market and companies competing to keep prices down, I think we would have better outcomes than people being tied to their employers plan which may or may not work for them. This also eliminates the need for people to worry about being left without health insurance or sudden expenses when they lose their job. They have a fixed expense they can anticipate and save for. Combine this with Medicaid for low income people, a progressively scaling subsidy for lowish income people, and the ubiquitous use of health care savings accounts that are tax advantaged and don't have to be spent in fiscal year, and I think we would have a decent system in place for insuring ACCESS adequately. Cost issues is another issue entirely.

A single payer healthcare system I think is ultimately likely outcome. If it was a perfect world, I would like to see a UHC system that had a progressively scaled deductible down to a very small or no deductible for low income patients. Co pays maybe too could scale progessively after the deductible is met and there would be a yearly maximum expenditure. Keep the tax advantaged HSAs around. This would help eliminate a lot of the unnecessary administrative costs of billing hundreds of different insurance plans, not being able to predict healthcare costs in advance to give patients accurate quotes, and unpredictability in income for the hospital itself. I think one of the reasons for cost increases in healthcare is a lack of transparency in billing due to it being completely unpredictable. How many times have you gone to a dentist or doctor and paid your copay only to receive another bill in 2 months for what the insurance didn't pay? A cost sharing component is necessary to curb abuse of healthcare resources and make people more inclined to look for competitive pricing. Cost sharing has increased dramatically over the last 4 years and it has directly lead to a slowdown in the growth of healthcare costs. Oh and the UHC would be completely paid for through a payroll tax and not run 30% budget deficits every year :)
 
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