Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!
Typical. Avoid engaging in discussion, and cast aspersions on anyone who has the temerity to bring up sides of the story you don't want to address. Do you disagree that it is possible that some individuals will consume more health care services now than they would have before? How can that not be an "adder" to what we spend on health care? Don't you think it matters whether all those adders are greater or smaller than the savings?
The fact is that health care does not "save" lives - there's no such thing as saving a life. Everyone who breathes life will some day die, so every life is already lost at the moment it begins. Health care simply delays deaths. Preventing 10,000 fatal heart attacks this year means that those people will die of something else, potentially even more expensive, in the future - how do you KNOW whether preventing those heart attacks really saves money? It will only save money if they live long enough to pay enough premiums between the "prevented heart attack" and their death to cover the costs during that time. That's a fact, whether you want to address it or not.
Just because you consider it to be "worth it" or the "humanly decent" thing to do, does not mean that it is free. The fact is that human lives have economic value; you cannot base serious public policy on the premise that delaying any death by any amount of time is worth an infinite number of dollars. It's a non starter. If the facts showed that Obamacare delayed just 10 deaths by 10 years but cost an extra $20 million, would you still be in favor of it? What about $20 trillion? If your answer changes then you've already admitted that human lives have economic value; now we're just haggling over price.
Lynah these questions have been addressed five billion times. If you're at work, and you keep asking questions that have been answered time and again by your boss, you don't think there would be
any consequences from that?
But, yet again, I'll answer for you. First of all, you seem to view healthcare from this post as a premiums = total costs or its too expensive. This is all well and good, but it ignores the previous state of healthcare spending. In fact, pre-ACA premiums weren't covering the cost of healthcare anyway, because people without insurance can just go to the ER when their situation becomes dire. So, your analysis is flawed in that it completely ignores the law of the land, which is everyone gets treated at the hospital regardless of ability to pay. That cost, and those savings from reducing those costs
MUST be included in the cost/benefit analysis of the ACA's effectiveness unless someone is a partisan hack.
Second, while your assertion that we all are going to die someday is no doubt true, do you not think the US is more productive now than it was 100 years ago because people aren't dying off as kids from small pox, or as adults in their prime years from the flu or a cut on their hand that gets infected. If you want to see the effect of declining health on a country's productivity look no further than Russia, or to the continent of Africa.
Lastly, there's a fairness issue in all of this. I'm personally responsible in that I've never gone without health insurance, even when starting out. Why shouldn't other people be. As a resident of Mass, I'm one of a dozen or so states that pays the freight in this country with our taxes propping up parasite conservative states which get more than they give. Why should I not expect people in WVA or KY to ease up on the cigs and maybe get a check-up once in awhile instead of waiting until they need emergency care, and then sticking the rest of us with the bill?
Your question has already been asked and answered Flaggy. Less than 1M people lost coverage, and most already found a replacement. Bottom line is, tens of millions now have coverage as liberalism keeps marching. Funny how this happened for something that nobody wanted....
