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 Originally Posted by wufwugy
RE: health care and business
Rilla, your dad isn't paying more for health care because of Obama.
Not him, his company. It's an easy thread to follow that legislative increases in healthcare costs find their way to the end employee.
The insurance companies jacked up the price as they usually do then Fox "reports" it's because of Obamacare. Most of the bill isn't in effect yet. Only a few specific things went into effect like you can stay on parents plan till 26 and kids can't be booted.
right, right, right, but this all sounds like noise when taken for surface temperature.
You can break health coverage into three categories
1. How many people are covered. When more people are covered, costs reduce due to preventative care and fewer high cost procedures. People who don't have coverage can't afford anything low cost, but they have no choice when their conditions become extreme. On top of that, people with serious conditions who can't get coverage become economic extra baggage. If the government/taxpayer picks up the tab for the few who can't afford coverage, then the overall costs drop because the consequences of not doing so are even more expensive. The economic multipliers of sick people is devastating to a society
This is wholly my understanding. It bows back to President Clinton on the Daily Show. I can't find the link though. But the idea that A) Our healthcare is stupid expensive and B) finding a way to force everyone into the system lowers the costs across the board forms the foundation of my pro Obamacare belief.
2. Administrative corruption. This is basically all the "you pay for coverage but get dropped when sick due to technical issue" kind of thing. US insurance companies have substantial costs just paying lawyers and accountants to figure out how to fuck consumers out of insurance. They profit enormously from this, and the people and debt skyrocket.
Yup, super agree. Not good for the conversation though, I just philosophically agree that this will lower costs.
3. Procedure redundancy. There is a lot to fix here. I'm not exactly sure why it exists, but there's a ton of worthless and expensive care. I guess there's a lot of money in charging people for stuff they don't need.
But this is like everything? People being charged 4,000 dollars for doctor visits without a doctor? I really don't know enough about medical care to say anything with any authority, but I know my brother was charged 400 bucks for pills he was recommended but never took in his last IC visit after an accident. It was only after we pointed out how crazy this was that it was rescinded.
What Obama's reform is supposed to do is eliminate coverage dropping and demonopolize insurance. It may do this by making it illegal to be denied coverage and makes a market of competing companies. This type of thing has worked in other countries, and it would reduce costs quite dramatically. I do think the law will survive till it becomes implemented in 2014, but I'm not ruling out loopholes and changes that will further benefit the insurance companies and keep our system much worse than it should be
The reason it's good for business is it's simply cheaper, and a huge cost for business is health coverage. In fact, health reform should make it to where business doesn't even need to provide coverage since everybody will have it, and when business do provide coverage it would be because it's all around cheaper in a sort of scaling or perk way
I mean, I like all this, and I'd love to drink the kool-aid, but... there isn't anything to drink.
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