Surprise! Obamacare tax to hit 6 million Americans

Did I miss the change where young, healthy people have become immune to cancer and no longer ever get into accidents?

 

A friend of mine is young (27) and was healthy until he woke up and found out he had stage 3 colon cancer...

 

I guess the scare tactics aren't working in NM.

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/a226cd65350b439aa158ee62871cb6bd/NM--Romney-Downsizing

:grin::grin::grin::grin:

 

I understand where he comes from, the odds are strongly in favor of someone like me being healthy (26 and most dangerous thing I do is drive to/from work), but that misses the real point.

Insurance largely screws over the healthy to benefit others, and for good reason. Most of us are going to live to be quite old. Most likely we will need medical care that we can't afford at some point in our life. That is why the mandate is important. Though it would be nicer just to have universal healthcare, and everyone be able to get adequate care without worrying about what will happen.

 

That is how insurance is supposed to work. The healthy subsidize the sick. It would definitely be better with universal healthcare since we can get over the whole healthy subsidizing the sick.

 

Nope. Did I miss the change where young, healthy people on average get more out of insurance than they put into it? Did I miss the change where the group that would be affected by the penalty (those who can afford to buy insurance but chose not to) were on average getting more care from the health care system than they were paying for? Aren't those considerations more germane to Ms. Britt's statement than the fact that some tiny minority of young, healthy people are going to require expensive catastrophic care?

 

So basically insurance is a dumb idea because you may not ever collect and morons who have no or low information should roll the dice.

True genius. I'm surprised it exists at all. You have identified a true market anomaly - i'll notify the multi trillion dollar insurance industry. This is nearly as revolutionary as your "credit is evil" hypothesis.

 

That's how all insurance works. On average, all people get less than they put into it - whether it be auto, home, health, or any other kind of insurance. If they didn't, the insurance company would be losing money and be out of business.

I don't see the relevance of this to her statement.

No. She said the following (in your quote):

"This (analysis) doesn't change the basic fact that the individual responsibility policy will only affect people who can afford health care but choose not to buy it," said Erin Shields Britt of the Health and Human Services Department. "We're no longer going to subsidize the care of those who can afford to buy insurance but make a choice not to buy it."

Both of those are true. It does only affect people who can afford health care but don't buy it. And we're no longer subsidizing any of those people anymore. Whether those people will now be subsidizing other parts of the system is not really relevant to her claim.

 

Not surprisingly you are missing the point. Of course the way insurance works is that a large pool pays in so that a smaller number of people can take more out. The point is, the people being forced to participate (or pay a penalty for not doing so) are far more likely to be in the part of the pool that is subsidizing the smaller number. What they are not is a bunch of moochers that have been subsidized up until this point. insurance is a voluntary risk spreading mechanism. Choosing to take your own risks is not being subsidized.

I'm aware of how insurance works. I'm not convinced that Ms. Britt is.

That would pretty much be the definition of being subsidized. If the amount this group was paying into the health care system is greater than or equal to the amount they are getting out, they are hardly being subsidized. The people being subsidized were the ones that couldn't afford health care and went to get care at the emergency room. They are the same people being subsidized under the new system. Crazy isn't it.

The point is those people were never being subsidized to begin with, at least collectively.

People that were responsible for themselves alone, who chose to self-insure, are being penalized for that choice, either by being force to subsidize others or pay a penalty directly to the government (which would then presumably be used to subsidize others). That is the relevance. It is the opposite of her claim.

 

Sure they were. As a group, a portion of those healthy/young/voluntarily uninsured were not getting health care (thus costing 0), some were paying their own way (no subsidy), and a portion of them were being subsidized (whoever got seriously ill and couldn't pay). Thus, net total, they were being subsidized.

It's not the opposite of her claim - it's not relevant to her claim. She says we're no longer subsidizing people who choose not to get insurance but can afford it - and she's right. Those people are no longer being subsidized. She doesn't say anything about not subsidizing others, like sick old people, or people not having to pay penalties or whatever else. The only claim she made was about no longer subsidizing those that can afford to pay. And on that claim, she's absolutely right. The rest are just words you're attributing to her.

 

The only non-tax option is to collect from the uninsured in advance or refuse them services. Obamacare is just an incentive to get people to take responsibility for themselves rather than burdening others.

Very Republican!