Repealing and replacing Obamacare: What kind of healthcare plan do you support?

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by TCassa89, Jan 21, 2017.

  1. TCassa89

    TCassa89 Well-Known Member

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    So here we are, our current government is ready to repeal and replace the ACA/Obamacare. The key detail that is often neglected by some media sources is the plan to replace Obamacare. The heart of this discussion is the replacement plan... the only problem is, we still don't know what this replacement plan is. We know they are working on a replacement plan, but we still don't know the details

    The current promises being made are to maintain the current rate of coverage, to protect people with preexisting conditions, and to allow people 26 years of age or younger to remain on their parents' insurance plan. The big challenge in this is finding a forumula that achieves these things, and is also financially sustainable. When you mandate insurance companies to accept people and not charge them more based on preexisting conditions, that company takes a loss. I do not mean they don't profit off of covering that individual, I mean they take a loss. The only way for the insurance company to overcome this loss is to have a sufficient number of healthy people buy insurance. Without the mandate, healthy people can simply wait until they get sick or injured before buying insurance, and since the insurance companies cannot deny them coverage on preexisting conditions they would have to accept them. That is why Obamacare runs on the insurance mandate forumla, the idea is to offset the expense of accepting preexisting conditions, by mandating healthy people to buy insurance or pay a tax so they do not run the whole system into the ground.

    Things didn't exactly go as planned under the Obamacare forumla. Fewer young and healthy people purchased insurance than the writers of the law had hoped for, the end result was significant increases in healthcare premiums to make up for the revenue losses. People were not happy about this result, and rightfully so... the American citizens pay more for their healthcare per capita than any other country in the world, yet we rank 38th in the world in coverage. The system put in place is greatly flawed, many people have benefited from the preexisting protections put in place, but we pay too much and cover too little. Around 80% of Americans polled say they want preexisting conditions to be protected, and president Trump has promised to maintain our current protections for people with people conditions in his healthcare replacement plan. Maintaining our protection for preexisting conditions is our main priority in replacing Obamacare, but this is not financially possible without some form of collective payment.

    A few possible formulas to achieve this are:

    1. The insurance mandate plan, where we mandate people to buy insurance or pay a tax to offset the revenue losses of mandating insurance companies to accept people and not charge them more based on their preexisting conditions.
    2. The public option, where we tax Americans to create a public trust fund, and we use this trust fund as an insurance provider for people with preexisting conditions.
    and 3. We tax Americans, and use that revenue to provide subsidies for individuals to buy health insurance, including the additional expenses of covering people with preexisting conditions


    So the big question for you is what kind of replacement plan for Obamacare do you support? Do you support protecting people with preexisting conditions, and if so how do we manage doing this in a way that is financially feasible?
     
  2. Belch

    Belch Well-Known Member

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    We do know, more or less, what the replacement will be. He mentioned health care accounts and buying insurance across state lines.

    Personally, I support the federal government getting out of the health care business altogether. If you're worried about snake oil peddlers, contact your state government.
     
  3. Mircea

    Mircea Well-Known Member

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    Obamacare should never have been implemented, and Republicans are neither logically, legally nor constitutionally obligated to create a replacement.

    The federal government needs to get out of the healthcare business and let the States create their own systems.

    Your State insurance regulators or State insurance commission can resolve the issue of pre-existing conditions with the stroke of a pen, so contact your local State representative.

    You do know what a "State" is, don't you? I mean after all, you do live in a federal republic and not a unitary nation-State.
     
  4. dadoalex

    dadoalex Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And that would be a disaster.

    Say we do that. All of the insurers then move to a state where it will be all but impossible to sue an insurance company for failing to pay claims.

    Denying claims or putting pre-approvals on a very slow roll (oh, sorry he died, we just approved his claim.)

    Unless resolution is given to the federal government this will be an extremely bad idea.
     
  5. Belch

    Belch Well-Known Member

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    Would you pay premiums to an insurance company that can refuse to pay claims? I wouldn't.
     
  6. dadoalex

    dadoalex Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Technically, if you have insurance, you already do.

    Most states have laws and regulations that protect consumers (at least to some degree) but some are less "friendly." How hard would it be to get a state like Louisiana (whose regulations are already anti-consumer) to install a requirement that all disputes must be resolved through arbitration with arbitrators appointed by a state board controlled by the insurers. Once that happens, all of the insurers move to that state and...

    Your insurance becomes essentially worthless.
     
  7. TCassa89

    TCassa89 Well-Known Member

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    Those are your opinions and I respect that, but that is not the plan of our current government. They are looking to replace it with a new national healthcare system, so the question is what kind of healthcare system do you support replacing Obamacare with?

    In most cases, when you improve market competition, you improve the quality of the product, and considering we are talking about a national healthcare plan, there will probably be federal regulations and guidelines included
     
  8. PARTIZAN1

    PARTIZAN1 Well-Known Member

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    Health insurance spending savings accounts are snake oil scams which I have debunked many times on thus forum. Insurance is currently sold across state lines. All that an insurance company has to do is register with the state's insurance commisioner's office and file proof that it ( the insurance company) can pay claims.

    People have this mistaken idea that there are many companies just clamering to sell insurance in every state. Not true. The few large insurance companies have the capacity to sell in any state or territory they want to and the companies I worked fir did. People have the mistaken notion that if we take away the right of each state to regulate insurance that magic will happen and prices will drop. Wrong. Clmpanies will not want to sell in some states because the fees that they woud have to pay docs and other medical providers woukd outstrip their profits. Trump and many others are out of their minds if they think that taking away states right to regulate will solve anything.
     
  9. PARTIZAN1

    PARTIZAN1 Well-Known Member

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    It does not matter if an insurance company is domiciled in a particular state or not. One major important action an insurance company needs to take is register with the states insurance commissioner's office and proove that it has the reserve capacity to pay the claims that it has promised to under the insurance contract.

    Removing the states ability to enforce that rule does not do any favors to the insured.

    The prime problem with insurance is not that people could not find insurance companies to sell them insurance but to sell them insurance at a premium price that they could afford. The problem of affordibility was not so much for the people who had acces to insurance in a group through an employer but thisevwho had to buy health insurance at individually rated prices. The large group health insurance policies had done away with the pre-existing condition restriction a long time ago. That was not the case for individually rated policies. Obama Care was supposed to eliminate individually rated policies and put everyone into "groups" and therefore premiums were supposed to be groupnrated just as if you were buying health insurance through an employer. Somewhere along the line that insurance company lobbyists got that provision killed.

    That in my opinion was the mane failing of ObamaCare.
     
  10. Belch

    Belch Well-Known Member

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    Can people residing in California purchase insurance only valid in Texas? Or do you actually need to reside in the state where the insurance is applicable?
     
  11. whinot

    whinot Banned

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    I support the non-productive perishing in and of their own void, instead of pointing govt guns at people forcing them to support their worthless lives.
     
  12. PARTIZAN1

    PARTIZAN1 Well-Known Member

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    Your first two points are basically partisan gibberish/nonsense.

    Now the case of the pre-existing conspditiion. A stroke if the pen dies not resolve the issue of the pre-existing condition it just outlaws it as a reason to deny coverage of that condition.

    So who pays fir those people who your stroke of the pen just covered their pretty-existing condition? Answer all if the other policy holders fir health insurance with that company.

    So does that "resolve" it for you?
     
  13. PARTIZAN1

    PARTIZAN1 Well-Known Member

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    It is not a question of insurance being valid in a state but how it is priced. Health insurance is priced by what we in the insurance industry call markets. Markets are groups of zip codes where the costs of medical care reasonably uniform. Example : in New York we had basically three markets. NewYork Metroplitan - being NYCity and the burbs where you could still smell NY, and Upstate - woukd be Bu,fool, Rochrster, Syracuse, and Midstate which was smaller towns smaller cities- rural.

    So these three markets are rated for premiums based upon the cost of health care in thise areas. NewYork Metropolitan woukd be outrageous as you can guess. Upstate high but not crazy NewYork costs, Midstate - well ok costs "reasonable".

    So mimicking your question can someone from the NewYorkMetropolitan area buy health insurance that is "valid" in rural Texas? If the NewYork City person could and did buy health insurance "valid" for rural Texas it would not do them any good because if the Texas company could and did sell the ZnewYorkCity person a policy they would not want to lay out the health costs of NewYork Metropolitan if they only collected premiums that reflect the medical costs in rural Texas.


    So the issue is that an insurance company needs to be able to get enough premium dollors to cover the cost of claim plus a small tiny little amount for profit so that PARTIZAN can keep getting his pension payment every month without missing any payments.

    Rural Texas premium rates do not cover costs and profits to pay NewYork Metropolitan claims.
     
  14. Deckel

    Deckel Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If you could, you would probably be nailed to the cross for out of network charges. My max out of pocket for those is twice my max for in-network.
     
  15. Senator Jack

    Senator Jack Active Member

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    Seriously, I just hope it's one that's affordable to those who need it. No matter what political affiliation.
     
  16. God & Country

    God & Country Well-Known Member

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    First let's get rid of government involvement in our healthcare. I'm in favor of going back to where we were pre Obama. Let the insurers do what the government cannot and that is to find ways to cut costs without affecting quality. They did it then and adjusting for eight wasted years they'll do it again. How about a more competitive market by allowing insurers to operate in all fifty states. This could create larger pools of people paying into a given group and this would bring down costs.The more healthy people in a group the less the insurers are burdened and the savings could be invested in better services or passed onto the consumer. Insuring pre-existing conditions is a noble gesture but disastrous to the overall integrity of a given plan. That isn't to say it should be excluded but there should be limits on coverage for self inflicted conditions like lung cancer related to smoking or any other abuse related illness. Perhaps the industry can figure out better ways to address this without penalizing healthy consumers. Under Obamacare my employer was forced to change our provider every year resulting in less coverage and outrageous deductibles. My present plan is 500% higher than it was in 2008 with higher co-pays on everything and I now have a $2000 dollar deductible. There are no easy answers save repealing the ACA.
     
  17. Deckel

    Deckel Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Paul Ryan has said that the 8% of the population who have the histories that would get them denied coverage would be pooled and the government would just pay for it under their plan, thereby taking them out of the private marketplace and lowering rates for everybody else to make their insurance more affordable.
     
  18. Zorro

    Zorro Well-Known Member

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    1. End the mandate. We do not force Americans to engage in commerce against their will.
    2. Return the insurance markets back to their pre-ACA form, other than Ins companies car write across State lines.
    3. Develop a national program for those that want policies, but can't get them.
     
  19. TCassa89

    TCassa89 Well-Known Member

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    Not covering people for self inflicting preexisting conditions is an idea, but it's not always so easy to determine when health conditions are the result of the subject's behavior. If it will save them money, a company would almost always favor claiming the patient's preexisting conditions are self inflicted

    About 15% of Americans smoke, and if you take coverage away from people for smoking, more people would simply lie about their own habits, thus you would have to prove the subject's conditions are preexisting, meaning you would need to conduct some sort of investigation or health examination to determine, which in itself is costly. It is also important to note that so long as you are protecting preexisting conditions (self inflicted or not) the system is not sustainable without some form of collective payment, meaning you mandate people to pay a tax or buy a premium. There is no other way to protect preexisting conditions, because 1. a company takes a loss when they accept people with preexisting conditions, and 2. it enables healthy people to wait until they get sick to buy insurance, and since the insurance company cannot deny them coverage based on preexisting conditions they would have no choice but to accept them. Thus the system would be financially unsustainable

    It is important that you specify whether or not you support protecting people with preexisting conditions. Also, is your idea for a national program a subsidy for buying private coverage, or is it a public option?
     
  20. Belch

    Belch Well-Known Member

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    a new national healthcare system? Do you really think that's going to happen after we have just witnessed the last failure at trying to do that? It'll be national alright, but you're not going to like it unless you already hate obamacare.

    Trumpcare is not going to involve any cuddling or coddling, unless you have some duckets to pay for it.
     
  21. Seth Bullock

    Seth Bullock Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    That makes some sense; we just need to be willing to pay for it.

    I wouldn't mind some sort of employer mandate to provide hospitalization insurance which would be cheap to cover most working age people. People could then be at their own liberty to purchase additional insurance for out-patient services, dental, and medicines, and insurance companies could offer a whole menu of varying levels of insurance for varying levels of cost. If people didn't purchase it, they would be liable for those costs themselves. Employers could also compete for good workers by offering these additional insurances as a part of their salary packages.

    My two cents ... :oldman:
     
  22. TCassa89

    TCassa89 Well-Known Member

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    Well, what president Trump said this month was “We’re going to have insurance for everybody" he went on to say "There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”

    and he also made it a campaign promise that he would maintain the policies in Obamacare which protect people with preexisting conditions and allow people 26 years old or younger to stay on their parents' plan (which of course would require some form of collective payment).. but maybe he was lying
     
  23. Deckel

    Deckel Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    He didn't go into excruciating detail; but summarized it during an interview this week with Charlie Rose. He said it is on their website. Not sure whose website exactly. It involves lots of different legislation for technical reasons. They are basically going to pool the uninsurable, give everybody else under 65 a $1500 tax credit regardless of income, and allow insurance companies to operate across state lines. They are doing it in a revenue neutral way by bootstrapping onto the already existing ACA funding mechanisms and try to drive down the market place costs for those people getting the credit by allowing insurers more flexibility in the policies they offer. My guess is the employer mandates and the ability to stay on the parents' insurance will remain intact.
     
  24. Maindawg

    Maindawg Account closed at members request

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    We have a national health care system in place. It's not new. It works very well. It's called medicare. It's been there for like 50 years so all the bugs have been solved. Now we have some 320 million people to take care of. Americans every one.citizens , brothers sisters cousins grandma dad's mom's, all of us. Every country in the world has medicare health care systems.
    Only in America do we permit billionaire criminals to control our health care system.
    You open enrollment to all Americans , the premium based upon income. You don't need to even raise taxes on anyone.

    If they revoke the ACA our healthcare system will collapse. Hospitals will close health care centers will close. Let me put it this way, not to be alarmist , but , children will die. Not that they already arent in red states where they deny the population access to care.

    I will say to that to most the ACA has not been a good law. But the revisionist historians who long for the days before the ACA are delusional at best. Because our health care system was broken a long time ago. It was a mess 8 years ago. Our problem is that our government is completely owned by the billionaires and they don't give a sht about you.To them you are a number , a slave. Just work and die. Quit wanting clean air and clean water.quit worrying about some Forrest or some river .You have no rights.

    It's about to get real.
     
  25. FoxHastings

    FoxHastings Well-Known Member

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    What kind of healthcare plan do you support?


    W H A T PLANS!??? Where are they ??? Are they being passed by Congress as we speak?

    H O W do we choose when there is NO PLAN??????
     

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