To be fair, you can’t just completely leave people with pre-existing conditions out to dry.
That said, the government forcibly passing this bill on to private companies is wrong.
Yeah, I’m good even though others may not be. I see this as one small step in the right direction. One day I hope more people who need help can get it.
exactly, because when the shit hits the fan for those with pre-existing conditions they will undoubtedly end up in a hospital somewhere, and at the end of the day their bill will fall on: tax payers, hospitals, doctors and the insurance industry. uninsured visits to the ER add costs to all of them.
Why does it matter? This wont be in effect until 2014 and that is 2 years after the world ends.
Fascism you can vote for!
Life isn’t fair. May sound snarky and cold, but nobody is responsible for some 300lb comic-book guy wannabe who doesn’t take care of himself and developed heart disease. That was his choice, and maybe he should’ve either taken care of himself, or took steps to at least TRY to be prepared when the shit hits the fan, and he eats himself into a coronary. Personal accountability is damn near absent in this era. Somebody fucks themselves up with their own choices and lifestyle, and it’s everybody else’s bad, huh? You are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nobody else is allowed to infringe upon those rights. At the same time, nobody else is obligated to help you if your pursuit of happiness infringes on your ability to live. You are allowed the right to make that mistake. But with rights come responsibilities, which people these days seem to forget. You are the only one responsible for the conditions your choices place upon your life and health and their ramifications, and that’s the way it should be. Or to put it plainly: “you made your bed…”
That objection would be relevant if health insurance, by and large, weren’t comprehensive. You want people to be responsible for you and every single last one of your health problems, large or small, then you get to be responsible for theirs. If you don’t want to be responsible for the obese comic book guys of this world, that’s what has to change.
this argument would be great if you weren’t having to pay for him regardless of if he is paying in himself or not. this is a fact that not many conservatives are willing to admit, your insurance premiums are higher because of the uninsured, your tax dollars go to reimburse doctors and hospitals to pay for the uninsured. your paying for them ALLREADY, wouldn’t you at least like for them to be chipping in themselves? or would you prefer that they don’t pay ANYTHING in and just take money out?
That isn’t how health insurance works, and will create a problem. That’s why there are conditions that AREN’T covered. They are expensive to treat, are usually ongoing (resulting in more and more money lost on that person), and they will wreck shit financially if they are allowed to be covered. Would you get into a fight where you are sure to lose, and end up imprisoned and tortured by the other guy for as long as he lives? Make a bet you KNOW you will lose all your money for the rest of the other guy’s life? That’s the equivalent of covering pre-existing conditions. By not doing these things, a health insurance company is successful. By mandating that these companies commit suicide in this fashion, government is acting maliciously, or very maliciously naive. Insurance is a BUSINESS, and businesses can’t run at a constant loss. I’m sorry your ideals tell you that that isn’t fair, but that’s the real world, yo.
Good post Rhio2k. It’s like everyone has to work to eat. But now some people who don’t work enough, still get to eat, and everyone else that’s already working to eat has to pick up the slack for those that can’t, or choose not to work.
But in this case, eating = healthcare. And healthcare is VERY expensive. So now you and I that are working are giving the insurance companies an ass load of money to take care of someone that maybe sitting on their ass all day playing videos, not exercising just like Rhio2k is sayin, and building up all this plaque in their arteries and veins, and we foot the bill when they get a heart attack.
If everyone worked a decent job, they could eat. Now Obama is making it so you don’t even have to work to eat. This is a step towards socialism, which my parents tried so hard to escape. yeah im salty. I voted for the guy too.
I may be paying for them already, but my expenses are not increasing the way they will when my employer decided obamacare is too expensive, and scraps the employee insurance, and forces us to either buy it ourselves (with regular super-increases so the companies can at least try to break even due to the guaranteed-loss P.C. customers) or do without.
Yeah, unfortunately not everyone has preventable medical conditions that exempt them from getting insured. Tell that to all the people with juvenile diabetes, muscular dystrophy, etc. etc. etc.
Medicare/caid, Muscular Dystrophy Association, Shriner’s Hospitals…
Yeah, I have Type 1 (Juvenile) diabetes. Without employer insurance, I’m basically screwed (though my insurance right now is horrid, I’m only squeaking by because my grandmother is covering my prescriptions until I meet my deductible).
or the babies that got labeled as having pre-existing conditions for being born too fat or too skinny.
what are we supposed to do though? simply let the 9.6% or whatever unemployed in america starve? i mean don’t get me wrong i don’t disagree with your point that it’s not entirely fair, but what legitimate alternative is there?
you might have a good point here. my only counter point however would be that the costs that are being passed onto us to pay could be a lot less if we catch problems before they are so critical that a uninsured would end up in the hospital. by that time the costs are sky high, and i’m in no way saying that preventative care will fix the problem, but at least it’s an attempt to lower the costs by shifting it more to lower cost procedures that get passed on rather than catastrophic ones being the only ones that we get.
The whole thing is kinda fucked, but there is no perfect alternative. That’s just too idealistic. There will always be the poor and sick. That’s ANY society. Show me a population that doesn’t have that and you’ve found real-life soylent green.
The reality is that many people will choose to do whatever they want if they knew there were no consequences to it. Say for example there’s a girl out there that is very promiscuous, but she chooses to be more responsible and use a condom because having babies is expensive. But now with Obama’s health care plan, she can afford to be more crazy, and with a guy she really likes, goes bareback. Now she’s pregnant, and finds out that the government will take care of most of it. Wow, to her, there is very little punishment for her mistake. So she is more likely to go out and do it again. And the responsible working class will each pay for part of her mistake with each additional baby she has delivered.
Then insurance companies will be run out of business when every male over 40 pays a doctor to stick a finger up his anus once a week.
That said, I think the government should do more for people with preexisting conditions. The thing about this bill is that the government isn’t doing anything for them…they’re making insurance companies do it for them.
There’s no perfect option, but something should be done. Obama is definitely going about it the wrong way, though.
Insurance companies themselves built, and expect to sustain, an incredibly wasteful business model that drives up the cost of medicine and allows them to take a cut of any medical expenditure, regardless of whether insurance is necessary in the situation or not. This is why it’s hard to brook a lot of whining about how their business model would come back to bite them in the ass if it turns out that somebody who actually needs their top-to-bottom coverage comes to get it.
i agree with you here, that’s why i’m a huge proponent of open and honest debate, as i think that the real solutions can only be discovered through such debate. unfortunately getting that out of our politicians is so impossible right now it isn’t even funny, which is why we as constituents need to fix our parties and have the debates ourselves, and then when we elect people to do things we have to hold them to their promises. if you don’t keep their feet to the fire they don’t do shit for you.
good point spudly, i think the real question on preventative care is where we find the best balance for our overall costs.
mvc2 i like your point about setting up the right incentives/disincentives so as to discourage that kind of behavior. and i do think your dead on that a fair amount of our programs are currently structured with the wrong incentives in mind.
as for the insurance companies i think you would be hard pressed to make the argument that their business model is not horrendously flawed when it comes to providing actual health benefits to those that they insure.
I always thought governments existed to help people, not just to manage things how they are. It a real shame how anytime tax money goes towards helping people who need it, millions jump up to claim how unfair it is to them.