Pre-existing conditions and Trumpcare

Absentglare · May 3, 2017

jaeger19 said:
Pre existing conditions is just a gimmick to discourage people from switching insurances when they jack up the rates.

all these people with pre existing conditions.. the vast vast vast majority of these folks WERE COVERED UNDER WORK PROVIDED INSURANCE..

And yet.. golly gee. .insurance companies were profitable.

Lordy be.. how could that be?

That's just another way of forcing the indentured servants to maintain constant employment or risk death.

Leveraging the desperation of prospective employee by forcing them to choose between slave wages and life-ruining bankruptcy/death.

Absentglare · May 3, 2017

ttwtt78640 said:
Nobody is talking about offering no (denying?) coverage for those with pre-existing conditions (aka acturarial risk factors). Age is a pre-exiting condition and yet the elderly are not said to be "denied coverage" simply because they are asked to pay higher premiums for that "same" policy coverage. Should those with very expensive cars and/or bad claims histories not be charged higher auto comprehensive premiums than "average" drivers?

Before Obamacare, 25% of Americans under the age of 65 had a "pre-existing condition" that would make them uninsurable.

That's no longer insurance, it's just a different form of billing where a middleman reams cherry picked customers.

Henrin · May 3, 2017

Absentglare said:
That's just another way of forcing the indentured servants to maintain constant employment or risk death.

Leveraging the desperation of prospective employee by forcing them to choose between slave wages and life-ruining bankruptcy/death.

Slave wages? I know if I had slaves I would pay them for sure. Oh wait...no I wouldn't.

Absentglare · May 3, 2017

Henrin said:
Slave wages? I know if I had slaves I would pay them for sure. Oh wait...no I wouldn't.

Okay.

Wage slavery is a pejorative term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person. It is usually used to refer to a situation where a person's livelihood depends on wages or a salary, especially when the dependence is total and immediate.[1][2]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

Henrin · May 3, 2017

Absentglare said:
Okay.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

I'm well aware of the term, thank you. Do you realize that it's a contradiction of terms? Playing cute with terms is nice and all until it makes you look like an idiot.

Henrin · May 3, 2017

Absentglare said:
Okay.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

On the note of what people actually mean by the term, lets just say it's in some ways even dumber than the term itself. Peoples lives are dependent on getting resources necessary to survive. While socialists love to suggest people are slaves if they must work for a wage, they forget that regardless of the system people will need to acquire the resources they need from people that have them. Trading with someone because you need something isn't slavery and the idea that it is only shows how dumb socialists really are.

Absentglare · May 3, 2017

Henrin said:
I'm well aware of the term, thank you. Do you realize that it's a contradiction of terms? Playing cute with terms is nice and all until it makes you look like an idiot.

It's not a contradiction. The slave has the same choice: work or death.

Henrin · May 3, 2017

Absentglare said:
It's not a contradiction. The slave has the same choice: work or death.

The term wage slave suggests wages are provided to slaves, which of course they are not. Someone that agrees to work is provided a wage in return for their service, while a slave is provided nothing in return for their service since their is no motivation on the slave owners part to do so.

jaeger19 · May 3, 2017

ttwtt78640 said:
There is no (or at least should not be any) debate over the existence of actuarial risk factors (aka pre-existing conditions) which, obviously, include age. The debate is entirely over how (best?) to distribute the cost of them. Let's use the pre-existing condition of age alone for purposes of simplifying further discussion.

Should the higher cost of medical care for the elderly (hardly a debatable claim) be born by A) higher insurance premiums and/or deductibles for all, B) higher premiums and/or deductibles for the elderly or C) should a high risk pool be established that receives tax subsidies to help offset those costs? If I have missed some viable alternative options then feel free to add them for discussion.

Option A is the basic PPACA approach - raise the "base cost" of all premiums and deductibles and then issue income based subsidies for many millions to offset those added "base costs".
Option B was the approach prior to PPACA and is still the rule for most other insurance premiums (home, car and life) - they are heavily based on individual policy actuarial risk factor analysis.
Option C is the basis for the current AHCA proposal - give public assistance to those in the high risk pool.

Of course, that omits other programs (like Medicaid and Medicare) and only addresses the "private" medical care insurance market. You brought up group plans, of which the most popular are employee pools, but they largely exclude the elderly, disabled or those otherwise unable to work, typically offer little additional subsidized help for spouse/dependent children added and are equally subsidized (thus no need to worry about setting different individual premium rates).

Except that's all BS.

Because at the end of the day.. all those pre existing coverages are covered under employer policies and yet golly gee.. insurance companies are still making profit. Anyone that has had to use their insurance basically has a "pre existing condition".

The "pre existing condition" issue for the insurance companies isn't really about limiting risk. Its about preventing competition by preventing people from changing their insurance and being subject to pre existing condition penalties.

jaeger19 · May 3, 2017

Absentglare said:
That's just another way of forcing the indentured servants to maintain constant employment or risk death.

Leveraging the desperation of prospective employee by forcing them to choose between slave wages and life-ruining bankruptcy/death.

Oh please.... your hyperbole is not helping the conversation or advancing the dialogue any.

Cigar · May 3, 2017

jaeger19 said:
Except that's all BS.

Because at the end of the day.. all those pre existing coverages are covered under employer policies and yet golly gee.. insurance companies are still making profit. Anyone that has had to use their insurance basically has a "pre existing condition".

The "pre existing condition" issue for the insurance companies isn't really about limiting risk. Its about preventing competition by preventing people from changing their insurance and being subject to pre existing condition penalties.

NOT True!

I have a Friend who owns his own Panting Company; up until Obamacare, he wasn't able to get coverage because of an pre-existing condition ... UNDER ANY COST!

His wife had to work, just for Insurance for him.

Absentglare · May 3, 2017

Henrin said:
The term wage slave suggests wages are provided to slaves, which of course they are not. Someone that agrees to work is provided a wage in return for their service, while a slave is provided nothing in return for their service since their is no motivation on the slave owners part to do so.

You claimed you understood the term, now you express a fundamental misunderstanding of it.

Absentglare · May 3, 2017

jaeger19 said:
Oh please.... your hyperbole is not helping the conversation or advancing the dialogue any.

That's ironic. Did you not understand my point?

25% of Americans under 65 have a pre-existing condition that would make them uninsurable before Obamacare.

You want to jeopardize all those people if they ever commit the *horrible* crime of not having a job for too long a period of time. If you don't want to hear hyperbole, it would make sense to avoid such a hyperbolic position.

jaeger19 · May 3, 2017

Cigar said:
NOT True!

I have a Friend who owns his own Panting Company; up until Obamacare, he wasn't able to get coverage because of an pre-existing condition ... UNDER ANY COST!

His wife had to work, just for Insurance for him.

Well.. one if he had insurance before his condition.. he would still have coverage

The point being.. you think your friend is the only one that has used healthcare insurance (i.e. has a pre existing condition?). He most certainly is not.. tons of folks in employered sponsored plans have "pre existing conditions".

the purpose of pre existing conditions is to prevent people from moving from insurance to insurance when rates go up.

jaeger19 · May 3, 2017

Absentglare said:
That's ironic. Did you not understand my point?

25% of Americans under 65 have a pre-existing condition that would make them uninsurable before Obamacare.

You want to jeopardize all those people if they ever commit the *horrible* crime of not having a job for too long a period of time. If you don't want to hear hyperbole, it would make sense to avoid such a hyperbolic position.

see... you have bought into the BS too.

I see.. so 25% of americans under 65 were uninsured before Obamacare? WRONG.. you better check your numbers there bud. Again.. hyperbole is not furthering the conversation.

And no.. I don't want to "jeopardize all those people".. I am simply pointing out that companies DON"T FRIGGIN NEED TO EXCLUDE PRE EXISTING CONDITIONS TO BE PROFITABLE OR SELF-SUSTAINING!.

Millions of americans PRIOR to the ACA had pre existing conditions and were covered under insurance.. and the companies were profitable. AND AFTER obamacare.. millions MORE people were covered under insurance though they had pre existing conditions.. AND AGAIN THE INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE STILL PROFITABLE.

GET IT?!?!?!? Or is your partisanship and hyperbole so great that you can't see that my argument is that the pre existing coverage crap the insurance companies spew is PURE BS!!!..

OR do you want to take the opposite of my position and support insurance companies using pre existing conditions as a necessary evil? \

IS THAT your position"?

Or should you just apologize for your hyperbole and partisanship?

Absentglare · May 3, 2017

jaeger19 said:
see... you have bought into the BS too.

I see.. so 25% of americans under 65 were uninsured before Obamacare?

Strawman. They had pre-existing conditions that prohibited them from being able to buy their own health insurance.

jaeger19 said:
WRONG.. you better check your numbers there bud. Again.. hyperbole is not furthering the conversation.

And no.. I don't want to "jeopardize all those people".. I am simply pointing out that companies DON"T FRIGGIN NEED TO EXCLUDE PRE EXISTING CONDITIONS TO BE PROFITABLE OR SELF-SUSTAINING!.

No ****, that's why Obamacare forced them to cover pre-existing conditions.

jaeger19 said:
Millions of americans PRIOR to the ACA had pre existing conditions and were covered under insurance.. and the companies were profitable. AND AFTER obamacare.. millions MORE people were covered under insurance though they had pre existing conditions.. AND AGAIN THE INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE STILL PROFITABLE.

GET IT?!?!?!? Or is your partisanship and hyperbole so great that you can't see that my argument is that the pre existing coverage crap the insurance companies spew is PURE BS!!!..

OR do you want to take the opposite of my position and support insurance companies using pre existing conditions as a necessary evil? \

IS THAT your position"?

Or should you just apologize for your hyperbole and partisanship?

You are really confused. Letting insurers refuse to offer insurance to those who have pre-existing conditions and are uninsured penalizes workers. This is because they have to remain employed (and therefore insured) in order to remain insure-able. It's oppression, slave wages- typical right wing desire to exploit workers for profit.

jaeger19 · May 3, 2017

Absentglare said:
Strawman. They had pre-existing conditions that prohibited them from being able to buy their own health insurance.

.

They were insured.

No ****, that's why Obamacare forced them to cover pre-existing conditions.

Yep.. so whats your problem

You are really confused. Letting insurers refuse to offer insurance to those who have pre-existing conditions and are uninsured penalizes workers

No you are confused. I have pointed out that it penalizes people AND ITS UNNECESSARY.

This is because they have to remain employed (and therefore insured) in order to remain insure-able. It's oppression, slave wages- typical right wing desire to exploit workers for profit.

Yeah.. that's just a bunch of hyperbole from you. My workers are not "slaves" and are not being "paid slave wages".. and the reason that I pay for their healthcare is BECASUE THEY DEMAND I PAY FOR HEATLHCARE INSURANCE FOR THEM.

They CERTAINLY could obtain private insurance on their own.. it would be generally CHEAPER for me if they were to do so. BUT they want to be covered by work because frankly its EASIER for them and they don't want to worry about it.

THEY DEMAND IT OF ME.. not the other way around.

If you can't have a discussion without your hyperbole you aren;t going to get anywhere.

Explaining that exclusion for pre existing conditions really is not necessary to make insurance viable is a legitimate and logical reason to not allow pre existing condition exclusions.

Explaining that the exclusion for pre existing conditions is "oppression and slave labor".. is going to get you dismissed (and righteously so) as a whackadoo.