Rush Limbaugh: Senate health care bill will lead to "250 million uninsured"

which is why they need to have a mandate.

 

This post is full of dumb.

 

This is just another reason to get this thing passed now.

 

So you can't answer the questions posed or you won't? Why are you such a prick? Goin' to lunch now, looking forward to your brilliance when I return. If Rush's facts are wrong, please correct them....

 

giddy, you need a mandate to stop the practice you are talking about. The GOP and Rush's buddies are against the mandate.

 

is there a reason to sign up and pay for automobile insurance BEFORE you really need it?

is there a reason to sign up and pay for home insurance BEFORE you really need it?

 

Because they don't have to accept you once you've had the accident or your home has been flooded or whatever.

However with the bill it would force insurers to not reject people because of pre-existing conditions. So unless there was a mandate they wouldn't have to sign up for insurance until they had cancer, or some other expensive condition.

 

I wonder what the current rate of participation is. I have a couple of friends who work in the group health insurance field. They are seeing people drop off at alarming rates.

The next round of BCBS rate increases are approximating 40%. Whatever was happening two years ago is irrelevant to now. We sat in a business with the HR person two weeks ago who told us that their 30-person group would just drop health insurance if the increasing costs kept up. That outcome was "maybe" one more rate increase away... if they waited that long!

 

nevermind.

 

So as of right now, there is no mandate... so is Rush's scenario still ludicrous with no mandate. You can accomplish a lot when you make people do things! It's one thing to force people to buy automobile insurance in order to drive (at $100-150 per month), but do you mandate health insurance that would be ten times as expensive?

 

You absolutely mandate health insurance. Yes. Unlike auto insurance there are companies that would pay for a large portion of that insurance.

If you don't mandate it, then you are basically allowing people to buy flood insurance after the hurricane has already struck.

If you don't mandate it, then insurance will go up for everyone that is lucky enough to have it, more people won't have it, rates for us all will continue to rise many times faster than the cost of living, and our quality of health care won't go up. Medicare and Medicaid will continue to head towards bankruptcy, people who don't have insurance will screw us all when they are forced to seek treatment at the emergency rooms.

 

Having a mandate would lower the cost of providing insurance for individuals and businesses.

Since we don't have one there is a two fold problem:

1. Healthy people who never go to the doctor drop out because they feel like they don't use it so don't need it. The largest group of uninsured are 25 year olds at 35% uninsured. Without those people in the pool kicking in premiums without making claims rates go through the roof.

2. At some point those healthy people may break a leg or whatever that necessitates ER care. They don't have insurance, the ER takes them anyway since they must, bills them but they can't afford a $10k-$50k bill so they don't pay it. The hospital has to raise rates on everything else to make up the difference so voila you have $20 aspirins. Not to mention your taxes go up because of the Disproportionate Share System.

Both the Federal government and state governments use tax revenues to pay health care providers for a portion of these costs through Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) payments, grants to Community Health Centers, and other mechanisms. In 2008, total government spending to reimburse uncompensated care costs incurred by medical providers was approximately $42.9 billion. In the absence of reform to slow the real growth rate of health spending and a subsequent rise in the uninsured, we project that the real annual tax burden of uncompensated care for an average family of four will rise from $627 in 2008 to $1,652 (in 2008 dollars) by 2030.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/CEA_Health_Care_Report.pdf

All of this is caused by a lack of a mandate.

People need to realize people being uninsured causes rates to go up for those that are insured. Healthcare costs go up, the prices of goods go up, your insurance premiums go up, and your taxes go up.