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The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

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Priceless said:
Maybe whether someone lives or dies is just an economic factor to you, but I'm guessing it means a little more to most people. I know it does to me.

I wonder if it means more to those religious folks always preaching about how precious life is.
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If the greatest reward is after you die (physically), why is life so precious? You'd think people would be rushing to their reward.
 
Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

Rover said:
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.
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No, the only metric I care about is % of GDP spent on health care, including premiums, government funding, donations to charitable health organizations, etc - ALL spending on health care. That is the total cost of heath care in this country, period. If we can save some money overall by shifting some of the spending away from propping up ERs with government subsidies and getting more people to pay premiums, I am 100% in favor of that. I just don't think we have the data to know if that will, in fact, be the case.

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.
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Please. Don't try fearmongering that we're going to turn into Africa without Obamacare. Beyond some level of spending, productivity gains will see diminishing returns. By the productivity argument, we should only provide health care for people who are gainfully employed, and I don't think that's where you really mean for us to go.

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?
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Sure - I completely agree with you on this. But that's a discussion about fairly distributing the cost, which is a separate topic from reducing the cost in the first place. To me, it does not automatically follow that the total cost will go down just because everyone is paying premiums - we're going to have to wait for many years to see what happens, which is really my entire point. It's far too early for the righties to declare failure and just as far too early for the lefties to declare success.
 
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Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

Priceless said:
Maybe whether someone lives or dies is just an economic factor to you, but I'm guessing it means a little more to most people. I know it does to me.
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I didn't say that human lives ONLY have economic value, just that regardless of what other "factors" you weigh regarding human lives, the economics cannot be ignored.
 
Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

LynahFan said:
Sure - I completely agree with you on this. But that's a discussion about fairly distributing the cost, which is a separate topic from reducing the cost in the first place. To me, it does not automatically follow that the total cost will go down just because everyone is paying premiums - we're going to have to wait for many years to see what happens, which is really my entire point. It's far too early for the righties to declare failure and just as far too early for the lefties to declare success.
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Pretty much this.
 
Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

St. Clown said:
Did your employer eat the cost increases instead of passing them along to you? If so, did that impact your pay raise, assuming there is one? If the answer to both of those questions are no, then you're in a rarified situation.
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I would say no they didn't eat the costs, definitely not their style. This year we actually got a raise, which we didnt last, so dont think it was taken from that pool either.
 
Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

JF_Gophers said:
If the greatest reward is after you die (physically), why is life so precious? You'd think people would be rushing to their reward.
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Preaching to the choir on this one. I remember when Oral Roberts said God told him to raise $20,000,000 or He would call Oral 'home' I wondered why he wouldn't take advantage of the opportunity to go to heaven.
 
Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

We can declare victory on Phase I, which is getting people to sign up for healthcare and frankly making people a lot smarter about what the costs of care really are. Make no mistake about it, that's a big victory and by the time this month is over we could be as high as 8M. This matters because there was a school of thought out there that tens of millions of people would never sign up for insurance because they either didn't care or were too cheap to do so. Given the robust response thus far (not just the exchanges but enhanced Medicare, kids on parents insurance, people signing up for private insurance) I think we can put that one to bed.
 
Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

Were kids who are now allowed to stay on their parents' plan included in the 7.1 million?
 
Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

FlagDUDE08 said:
At the cost of the right answer.
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Interesting. You don't know what Common Core is, do you? :D

(I realize this doesn't belong here, but it always amuses me when people blame their perception of poor math education on a newly adopted set of standards. Especially when those standards were adopted by states individually, and are slightly more rigorous than most of those states previously had. I'm not quite sure why people think that a different set of standards is the same as a different teaching method, but what can you do?)
 
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Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

dxmnkd316 said:
Were kids who are now allowed to stay on their parents' plan included in the 7.1 million?
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No, they're separate and assumed to be @ 3M.

7.1M is strictly people who used the exchanges. No Medicare, no private insurance, no kids on parents' plans.
 
Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

Rover said:
No, they're separate and assumed to be @ 3M.

7.1M is strictly people who used the exchanges. No Medicare, no private insurance, no kids on parents' plans.
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I used the exchange in Colorado. Worked out pretty well for me, too. I got a much better rate than I would have through my job, on a similar but slightly better policy. I kind of suspect that a lot of people, if they checked it out, would have found something similar, but who knows, since I have only my own experience to go on. I have to say, anything that disconnects health insurance from employment seems to me like a good thing, so that employees can really see (a little more) transparently how much money they cost their employer.

edit: That third sentence is a little unclear. The less expensive policy I got through the exchange is slightly better than the more expensive one that I could have gotten through my employer.
 
Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

Rover said:
No, they're separate and assumed to be @ 3M.

7.1M is strictly people who used the exchanges. No Medicare, no private insurance, no kids on parents' plans.
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Thanks.

I think those 3M are just as important if not more important than the 7.1M that signed up via the exchanges. I really do.
 
Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

duper said:
I used the exchange in Colorado. Worked out pretty well for me, too. I got a much better rate than I would have through my job, on a similar but slightly better policy. I kind of suspect that a lot of people, if they checked it out, would have found something similar, but who knows, since I have only my own experience to go on. I have to say, anything that disconnects health insurance from employment seems to me like a good thing, so that employees can really see (a little more) transparently how much money they cost their employer.

edit: That third sentence is a little unclear. The less expensive policy I got through the exchange is slightly better than the more expensive one that I could have gotten through my employer.
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I assume you didn't qualify for any subsidies since you have a qualified plan offered through your employer?
 
Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

dxmnkd316 said:
Thanks.

I think those 3M are just as important if not more important than the 7.1M that signed up via the exchanges. I really do.
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It's certainly adding to the money pool. I'm paying for one of those 3 million myself.
 
St. Clown said:
Did your employer eat the cost increases instead of passing them along to you? If so, did that impact your pay raise, assuming there is one? If the answer to both of those questions are no, then you're in a rarified situation.
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My employer's premiums went down. That had no impact on my salary.
 
Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

ScoobyDoo said:
It's certainly adding to the money pool. I'm paying for one of those 3 million myself.
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It is. And since they're all fairly young, it most likely means they are fairly low cost compared to an older person who doesn't yet qualify for Medicare.
 
Re: The PPACA Implementation Phase II - Love it or Lose it!

dxmnkd316 said:
I assume you didn't qualify for any subsidies since you have a qualified plan offered through your employer?
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Actually I did, and a fairly significant one, but the plan would have been significantly cheaper than the one offered through my employer even without the subsidy. And for the record, my pay is low enough that if I paid what the plan cost without the subsidy, I would not also be able to afford rent and utilities, to say nothing of food. In my case, even though I have a full-time job, the subsidy was what allows me to have insurance, and therefore not need to wait until a situation is an ER situation before seeing a doctor.
 
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