Health Care Thread

Grim1_sl said:

HHS rewrote the regulations to force the insurance companies to drop the coverage of those plans. The insurance companies had no choice but to follow those regs. Blaming the companies for something that was always intended by the design of ObamaCare is really a sad statement on your inability to accept facts. Business, especially big business, have to abide by the regulations put in place or they are not in business for very long.

The whole basis of ObamaCare is spreading out the risk among as big a pool as possible, and if the millions of people on the low cost catastrophic plans had been allowed to keep them then the cost to everyone else would go up much higher than it is already. You know that and yet you continue to spout the lies and talking point spin of this discredited administration. Ick.

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Spoiler

Vaclav_sl said:

Predatory plans were supposed to be where the net benefit would by design always be a net loss for the consumer - but "substandard" where they're just missing minutiae like maternity coverage were not supposed to have been cancelled outside of factors in control of the insurance companies.

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Vaclav_sl said:

Please explain to me if they didn't do anything out of the ordinary to get the plans cancelled why did ANY SINGLE CATEGORY BEING CHANGED TO ITS LEGAL LIMITS not trigger the "no longer legal under the ACA" issue?

Why did they have to do multiple things to get it to occur?

If I'm sitting here with a gun, it's probably not intentional if I shoot someone.
If I'm sitting here with a gun, and I start loading it - I might not be intending to shoot someone but it gets a bit more plausible.
If I'm sitting here with a gun, I load it while cursing about "Those damn naggers" - it's seeming I probably am intending to shoot someone.
If I'm sitting here with a gun, I load it while cursing about "Those damn naggers", while trailing my gun on a black man walking down the street - any doubt has been removed, I absolutely am intending to shoot someone.

The more actions you take that end up in a result, the more intentional it seems. If they could've gotten plans cancelled with only a single change, I'd be inclined to believe you - but with most having 3+ changes to get them invalidated it's quite implausible. Occam's Razor says that the simplest solution is usually the most accurate, and simplest solution is that they wanted it to happen.

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Vaclav_sl said:

According to WaPo print the other day - at least one insurer stated that they felt the ACA exchanges would be more profitable to them, and wanted to edge people into them for that reason. (And they have no intent even if allowed to reinstate policies that the "ACA cancelled" to reissue them because of that)

As for the administration, I think they dropped the ball big time - I'm not going to dogpile on someone being assaulted to an inappropriate degree over it though, while another facet of the problem is ignored by the majority however.

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Vaclav_sl said:

Technically lower premiums were never stated directly - that was out of context - he was stating that the ACA OVER IT'S INITIAL TEN YEARS would slow the cost rise and that at the end of the estimated timeframe they would cost less against what they would've cost otherwise. People keep mistaking that future tense for "As soon as it starts" when if you compare it against the CBO estimates its clear that he meant over the run of the estimate. (and has been true thusfar - estimates were 8% a year without, we've been averaging about half that for the years premium adjustments were allowed thusfar)

But yes, he was foolish to promise it - I still can't believe he never clarified it to cover things like "...but your insurer still can cancel or start policies however they see fit under the existing framework" amongst other things - with his wording he had used if two insurance companies decided to change their business model and go into a different field (which seems reasonable with some of the "Let's go single payer" writing on the wall) would've sounded like a lie as well, since every policy they had would obviously be cancelled if the company no longer exists. His statement was incredibly poorly thought out rife with obvious failings unless you believe that the Federal government has super tight draconian control over every little thing insurance companies do - which hopefully no one does, since that's obviously far from the truth.

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Vaclav_sl said:

Technically lower premiums were never stated directly - that was out of context - he was stating that the ACA OVER IT'S INITIAL TEN YEARS would slow the cost rise and that at the end of the estimated timeframe they would cost less against what they would've cost otherwise.

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Vaclav_sl said:

Well the private market isn't going to fix healthcare, they created the debacle themselves. The only way we could "free market" our way out of it would be to take ALL the law out of health care, but that could cause all sorts of problems to return - snake oil salesmen, experimenting without consent, etc.

Realistically the question is HOW the Federalis are going to fix it - but with them being more focused on elections and keeping their jobs over doing their job the best they can... it's going to be a long, long trip there that we'll likely not see in our lifetimes.

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Grim1_sl said:

Capitalism won a long time ago. It is the strongest and best system for people as a whole, as long as it is checked by proper government oversight. The insurance system didn't need to be taken over by the government it just needed to be overseen better by the people we voted in to do that job. The reason the people we voted in did such a bad job is because there are too many clueless people like you who chose to believe their lies and vote for them, rather than hold them accountable for it.

What you need to do is grow up a little and realize that your fantasy of a perfect government that will take care of everyone from cradle to grave is an impossible dream that will never be realized because of basic human nature. And you can't change human nature.

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