i'll give you the first one off the top of my head, because i think its awful.... a penalty on people for not having insurance. even tho i think people are absolutely stupid for not having insurance if they can afford it, it is their choice. use a carrot. give tax breaks to lower income brackets for having insurance if you want to get more people insured. but a penalty for not... thats bs. cut costs to make it affordable based on private insurance as we have now, expand medicaid to cover more low income children (the children do not have a say if their parents buy insurance), and give a carrot, not carry a stick. i plan on it. but it will be too late. and it doesnt have to bee 1,000 pieces of legislation. but a series of bills that are categorized around areas of true reform. you know, the middle ground. edit to add: the accounting on this i dont trust. as supa just pointed out, the student loan program somehow being put into it to help make the numbers look better? that is a prime example of everything including the kitchen sink.
The idea is that health insurance for all ends hospitals having to treat people for "free" in emergency rooms. It ends the notion of the state having to provide charity hospitals for the uninsured. Insurance works by spreading risk among a group so big that the actuarial numbers are dependably accurate and everybody gets to take advantage of lower rates. If low-paid individuals could just decide to get DirecTV instead of health insurance because the government has to treat them anyway, then they are cheating the rest of us who pay higher insurance and hospital rates and save nothing on our taxes that support the charity hospitals. If young, healthy, affluent people decide to skip insurance payments while they are young and healthy (and many do) and then start picking them up at age 50 when they begin needing more care, then they cheat the rest of us by not paying their fair share of the contributions, fully intending to take full advantage of the benefits. Despite FOXnews trying to portray this as an infringement of personal freedom, what it actually does is make the freeloaders play by the rules that benefit the most of us. It is no different than penalizing people who drive without liability insurance.
Your assumption is flat out wrong here. This isn't health insurance for all for two reasons. One is that five percent of the people isn't covered in this bill. Second is that some people will choose to pay the fine instead of having insurance. An unintended consequence is that some will choose to get insurance only when they need it if you make it to where people with pre-existing conditions can get insurance.
Who are the five percent? They have that freedom. It's just not free and the fine will cost as much as insurance. This notion flies in the face of insurance-for-all that you just invoked. It's why insurance is and should be mandatory--to prevent the unscrupulous from taking advantage of it.
Who might, or might not be, covered under the healthcare bills - Los Angeles Times Illegals are not covered either, there will be consequences for them STILL clogging up doctors and hospitals in this country!
I don't watch fox news. I was googling something and found this on the cnbc site. Young and healthy aside, do a series of reforms as I stated to truly bring down costs to make ins more affordable by helping those that want and need it that are in lower income brackets. Don't punish them. I want to stop ers from being overloaded as much as anyone. Just don't agree with this way.
the insurers can just charge more for high risk old people. problem solved. we save money when we are young, then pay that saved money back when we are old. no government hamfisted nonsense necessary.
Let me clarify something. The CBO's estimates are almost always very good. My comment was not about their accuracy. It was more about the many qualifiers in the report that are overlooked infavor of the big headline. The CBO's projections are based on the bill being followed word for word and all its legislation taking effect. In the past this has never happened. It is especially hurt by the long time frame this bill takes to bear fruit. There are too many moving peices to make projections that will still be valid in twenty years.
Red i just want to make sure i understand you... Are you saying that you believe everyone in the USA should be forced to have health insurance?
So . . . As I read this, it isn't five percent of Americans. It is 3 to 6 percent of those eligible for subsides. It doesn't affect the vast majority of people who get group insurance already, just those seeking private insurance. And of those it doesn't affect families making 88K (4 times the poverty rate) or more because they can find affordable insurance. It allows those making slightly more than that to apply for subsides anyway if they can prove that available insurance would exceed 8% of their income. Some won't be approved and that is the 3-to-5 percent that will have to pay for their own insurance. It's not that they won't be covered, it is that they are not eligible to be covered and already have sufficient income to buy health insurance. What is the problem? The system has to draw the line somewhere. They should deport illegal foreign nationals to hospitals in their own countries. I have always said this.
