To Evince

Obviously you are incapable of comprehending what I wrote. I clearly stated that for those with an illness that precluded them from getting coverage on their own.... THEY should develop a government plan for them.

Make everyone ELSE pay for their own.


Hooray for health insurer profits! I'm sure taxpayers and the sick would make out swimmingly, too.
 
Thanks for the input. Now I will share my experience with the new health care legislation. Last week, my employer informed me that I may have to start paying part of my health insurance premium due to increased costs associated with health care legislation. So much for "Affordable Care Act."

I've been paying part of my premium for close to 20 years, and I don't know anyone who gets health care from an employer without paying something toward it. You've been lucky.
 
Con: Every time we have added a layer of 'guaranteed' coverage, costs of health care premiums for EVERYONE have escalated.

A better approach would be to have everyone get qualified on their own (like we did in the days prior to the insane escalation) and then purchase catastrophic coverage (ie... anything in excess of $3k or $5k etc... depending on ones' income level).

Make all the obese people pay the higher premiums that they should be paying.

For those with Cancer/alzheimers etc... that do not have a cure that would not qualify on their own.... Create a government plan for THEM.

As long as you pretend it is 'free' ie... money is not coming out of the pocket of the individual each visit (not talking $20 co pays either) they are going to tend to abuse the system.

For me the pre-existing coverage denial was for migraines. A condition that means once or twice a month I take a prescription drug. The amount we contribute to the monthly premium is many times the cost of the drug. How is this fair, and how narrowly should pre-existing condition be defined?

In the end my husband browbeat them into allowing coverage but it wasn't easy.
 
For me the pre-existing coverage denial was for migraines. A condition that means once or twice a month I take a prescription drug. The amount we contribute to the monthly premium is many times the cost of the drug. How is this fair, and how narrowly should pre-existing condition be defined?

In the end my husband browbeat them into allowing coverage but it wasn't easy.

You want to know WHY your premium costs many times more the cost of the drug?

It is because liberals want EVERYTHING covered under health insurance policies. Your premiums are paying for countless possibilities that you personally will not likely need. If we go back to getting coverage that provides for the catastrophic needs and gets away from the 'cover everything with a very low deductible' mentality.... THEN people's premiums can go down.
 
You want to know WHY your premium costs many times more the cost of the drug?

It is because liberals want EVERYTHING covered under health insurance policies. Your premiums are paying for countless possibilities that you personally will not likely need. If we go back to getting coverage that provides for the catastrophic needs and gets away from the 'cover everything with a very low deductible' mentality.... THEN people's premiums can go down.

What I want to know is where the line should be drawn on pre-existing conditions. I'm way over thinking that insurance companies are going to be fair and reasonable. Mine paid for my pre-natal care, hospital deliveries, and years of my kids' regular medical exams and shots, yet they were going to deny me over a couple of migraine prescriptions a year. A pox on them all.
 
I've been paying part of my premium for close to 20 years, and I don't know anyone who gets health care from an employer without paying something toward it. You've been lucky.

With all due respect, that's irrelevant. The fact of the matter is, the new health care legislation is increasing my premium to the extent that I will have to pay the difference. The bill was supposedly intended to decrease costs, yet it seems to have accomplished the opposite.
 
With all due respect, that's irrelevant. The fact of the matter is, the new health care legislation is increasing my premium to the extent that I will have to pay the difference. The bill was supposedly intended to decrease costs, yet it seems to have accomplished the opposite.

My premium goes up every year, and always has. And now the current company is dropping some some of the procedures they formerly paid, in addition to the annual increase. Granted I haven't surveyed the country but nobody I know has had a fixed premium from year to year. So my point was relevant in the sense that the change in premium is new for you but has been SOP for others, even before the bill was passed.
 
The typical profit margin for health insurers is a razor-thin 2.5 percent. There are no "obscene profits" in the health insurance industry.


And what would happen to insurance company profits if all of the sick people were dumped to government coverage as SF proposed?
 
??? another of your 'I'm just teasing' posts or are you again... just this fucking stupid?


No, that was a serious post. If insurers got to dump sick people onto a government plan they would rake in lots of money while the government would be saddled with providing care for the sick people. It isn't tough to figure out.
 
And what would happen to insurance company profits if all of the sick people were dumped to government coverage as SF proposed?

SF's proposal is obviously just a mandate by a different name. We won't make you have health insurance, but we'll tax the money out of you anyway. Also, it's not politically realistic. If you are going to cover everyone, in the end you always essentially wind up with a mandate by one name or another. You can try to hide it in the equation, but it's there.

So, mandate or dead people. Your choice.
 
My premium goes up every year, and always has. And now the current company is dropping some some of the procedures they formerly paid, in addition to the annual increase. Granted I haven't surveyed the country but nobody I know has had a fixed premium from year to year. So my point was relevant in the sense that the change in premium is new for you but has been SOP for others, even before the bill was passed.

Premiums go up every year because of the high healthcare cost inflation. Not much you can do about that outside of price fixing.

It's true that healthcare insurance companies don't make extreme profits, but with a social system I don't really see the need for them to be there sucking up any profits at all. If I have the choice between people dying and keeping them in the system, though, I'm going to be forced to play realpolitik and just shrug it off.
 
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Which doesn't change that in order to keep her child dying from leukemia it doesn't take making my coverage suck. It would have been far cheaper and less intrusive to simply cover the people who weren't covered like he promised instead of working to make everybody's coverage equally sucky or so expensive that only the very rich can afford better coverage while STILL not covering many people (according to the CBO estimates 5% or more will STILL not be covered in 2020.)

Illegals?

And it doesn't change the insurance you have currently unless your plan is shittier than the minimum.
 
Thanks for the input. Now I will share my experience with the new health care legislation. Last week, my employer informed me that I may have to start paying part of my health insurance premium due to increased costs associated with health care legislation. So much for "Affordable Care Act."


And your healthcare would have gone up if they did nothing.

The healthcare industry was raising rates like bandits over the last decade.
 
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fort...ies/Health_Care_Insurance_Managed_Care/1.html



REVENUES PROFITS
Rank Company 1,000 revenues rank $ millions % change from 2005 $ millions % change from 2005
1 UnitedHealth Group 21 71,542 58 4,159 26
2 Wellpoint 35 56,953 26 3,095 26
3 Aetna 85 25,569 12 1,702 4
4 Humana 110 21,417 49 487 58
5 Cigna 139 16,547 -1 1,155 -29
6 Health Net 189 12,908 8 329 43
7 Coventry Health Care 313 7,734 17 560 12
8 WellCare Health Plans 551 3,763 100 139 168
9 Amerigroup 676 2,835 22 107 100
10 Centene 792 2,279 51 -44 -178
11 Medical Mutual of Ohio 847 2,039 10 100 57
12 Molina Healthcare 858 2,005 22 46 66
13 Sierra Health Services 943 1,719 24 140 17

From the April 30th, 2007 issue
 
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What I want to know is where the line should be drawn on pre-existing conditions. I'm way over thinking that insurance companies are going to be fair and reasonable. Mine paid for my pre-natal care, hospital deliveries, and years of my kids' regular medical exams and shots, yet they were going to deny me over a couple of migraine prescriptions a year. A pox on them all.

again....

Mine paid for my pre-natal care, hospital deliveries, and years of my kids' regular medical exams and shots

Yet you complain about....

yet they were going to deny me over a couple of migraine prescriptions a year

They can't cover EVERYTHING. If you want them to cover EVERYTHING, then you are going to continue seeing astronomical increases in health care costs over the coming decades.

Some things we have to pay out of pocket.

You ask for a line of 'pre-existing conditions'.... the line that should be drawn is WHAT is covered.

Your example is perfect....

Things like preventative medicine (ie... prenatal care and regular checkups) that can help prevent major medical costs by catching problems early are good. Everyone should be getting a preventative check up each year.

Things like hospital deliveries, which quite simply cost more than the average person can afford in a year are good. While some people will go their entire lives without having kids, most people will have a child and thus this is something that should be incorporated into plans.

Headaches, no matter how severe, should not be covered (IMO). Things like this where a small percentage of the population will experience migranes should not be covered in base plans. Otherwise we ALL end up paying for the protection for something we are (a) unlikely to need and (b) isn't a financial impediment.
 
No, that was a serious post. If insurers got to dump sick people onto a government plan they would rake in lots of money while the government would be saddled with providing care for the sick people. It isn't tough to figure out.

1) The government is ALREADY saddled with paying for the uninsured because liberals thinks it is the job of the government to do so. Also, please don't pretend I said the government would pay for all 'sick' people. Those with obesity issues would pay for their own. They would have one of three options:

(a) pay higher premiums
(b) get fat ass in shape by eating healthy and exercising
(c) dig their own grave

2) The point is to reduce the premiums of the healthy, to quit the ignorant policy of 'guaranteed coverage'. You seem to pretend that the insurance companies would take their profit margins from 7-8% up to 20% (or some such increase). That is not the case.
 
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fort...ies/Health_Care_Insurance_Managed_Care/1.html



REVENUES PROFITS
Rank Company 1,000 revenues rank $ millions % change from 2005 $ millions % change from 2005
1 UnitedHealth Group 21 71,542 58 4,159 26
2 Wellpoint 35 56,953 26 3,095 26
3 Aetna 85 25,569 12 1,702 4
4 Humana 110 21,417 49 487 58
5 Cigna 139 16,547 -1 1,155 -29
6 Health Net 189 12,908 8 329 43
7 Coventry Health Care 313 7,734 17 560 12
8 WellCare Health Plans 551 3,763 100 139 168
9 Amerigroup 676 2,835 22 107 100
10 Centene 792 2,279 51 -44 -178
11 Medical Mutual of Ohio 847 2,039 10 100 57
12 Molina Healthcare 858 2,005 22 46 66
13 Sierra Health Services 943 1,719 24 140 17

From the April 30th, 2007 issue

So based on your above numbers the profit margins were:

united Health 5.81%
Wellpoint 5.43%
Aetna 6.66% (avoid them, obviously evil)
Humana 2.27%
Cigna 6.98%
Health Net 2.55%

Those were the top ones... wow... totally evil companies all making under 7% profit margins.
 
And what would happen to insurance company profits if all of the sick people were dumped to government coverage as SF proposed?

???????....obviously they would disappear, since no one would be paying them premiums, but would instead be paying into the government plan....
 
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