Quote:
Originally Posted by GenuineRisk
Rupert, I just read the article you linked to and, probably due to your ODS (Obama Derangement Syndrome), I don't think you understood it. It wasn't a gloom-and-doom-catastrophe-is-imminent piece at all. I took from it that there's going to be a scuffle over rate increases in 2017 as companies look to make a profit (as the resident of a rent-stabilized apartment in NYC, I experience this scuffle every year between the city and the landlords), but nowhere in the article does anyone say collapse is on the near horizon.
Basically the article says the program is new, and it's got kinks. One of the kinks, which no one really discusses, is that OF COURSE individuals seeking coverage are going to, on the whole, be sicker than those who get insurance through their jobs. To have employer-covered insurance, you have to be healthy enough to work a 30-40 hour a week job, so by tying insurance to work, the market is already filtering out the chronically and severely ill (especially because it's ridiculously easy for an employer to drop an employee who gets too sick to work). Which makes capitalist sense, but is morally bankrupt. This new program is going to naturally attract people who need care more urgently, and many of them are going to be catching up on years of health issues that were neglected while they couldn't get insurance, which have since snowballed into bigger health problems. That difference won't entirely disappear, but as more people get coverage and regular medical care, including getting chronic conditions like diabetes, treated early, when it's cheap, as opposed to waiting and having to get a limb amputated later, which is not cheap, the level of "sick" versus "healthy" customers will start to even out a bit.
The ACA, until such time as the nation wises up and does Universal Medicare, will continue to be the "until something better comes along, meaning employer-provided health insurance" option. It's up to the government to keep tinkering with the regulations to find the balance that keeps large companies like BCBS in the game (because no one cares if the smaller ones drop out; they were victims of competition, and that's capitalism for you) and provides decent coverage for the majority of Americans. But hey, Social Security was not an effective program when it started, either, and decades later, it keeps millions of seniors out of poverty. But it needed time.
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It is what it is. The article was pretty clear. You can spin it any way you like. But is sounds like the bottom line is that rates are going to go way up. Could things get better in 10 years from now if more healthy individuals enter the market? Yes, I'm sure that could happen. But over the next few years, it sounds like there is going to be a real problem and it sounds like the result will be skyrocketing premiums in the individual market. I hope it's not too bad. My premium already went up 75%. I sure hope it doesn't go up another 50%. The good news is that I think this only affects a relatively small percentage of Americans, maybe 5-10%. Those people are basically paying for all the sick people. This isn't a surprise. Somebody was going to have to pay for all the sick people who didn't have insurance. It's a zero-sum game. The money was going to have to come from somewhere.
When they were marketing this thing, they certainly weren't going to tell you the truth. Obama wasn't go to say, "We need to insure all the sick people. So all you healthy people need to pay for it. It's the right and moral thing to do." I'm not saying that isn't a legitimate argument. I'm just saying very few people would have supported it if they would have told the truth.
And as I'm sure you know, one of the top architects of the ACA basically admitted that. He said that if they would have told the truth, nobody would have supported it. Here are a few of his quotes:
“And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass."
“Look, I wish . . . that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
“If you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in — you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed.”
http://nypost.com/2014/11/13/obamaca...voters-stupid/