Are you really worse off?
The word “insurance” has lost all meaning when it comes to health care, and the continual confusion and conflation of the two lies at the root of much of the problem. Crazy idea: I want a health savings account to deal with normal medical expenses, and insurance for catastrophes. You know, the way insurance used to be until it got screwed up by wage controls during the war and union negotiators.
“The implicit standard in analysis of the health insurance system is that every consumer must have government-selected coverage.” But of course. The more the serfs have to depend on Big Brother, the better “liberal” State-fellators like it.
Isn’t that what you have under Obamacare?
The semi-affordable individual plans have yuge deductibles so you are paying most stuff out of pocket, and then, “if something happens to you”, you can get the big expenses covered. Maybe. Or at least if you are female, you can get reproductive health services?
It might be, if the premiums hadn’t gone through the roof due to it covering a lot of things I’ll never need.
Exactly what I said, Rand — you need coverage for reproductive health services.
That’s again what I am saying, you essentially have a catastrophic health plan, and the new fees are a catastrophe?
“The semi-affordable individual plans have yuge deductibles so you are paying most stuff out of pocket, and then, “if something happens to you”, you can get the big expenses covered. Maybe. Or at least if you are female, you can get reproductive health services?”
Explain why males with Obamacare policies had to pay for gynecological coverage.
I’ll tell you why – to pay for the system.
Why should people pay for coverage they would never use?
No it wasn’t as nice as you’d like to believe
C’mon people, doesn’t anyone here “do” irony or sarcasm?
Doesn’t “semi-affordable” (as in the Semi-Affordable Care Act), “yuge deductibles”, “big expenses covered — maybe” and Rand qualifying for reproductive health services fit into those categories?
Sarcasm can be hard to detect in plain text. That’s why a lot of people put a /s tag at the end.
S.A.C.A. … would that be pronounced Sucka, ghetto speak for sucker?
Can we lay to rest this complaint “health insurance isn’t really ‘insurance'”?
Maybe call it a “pre-partially-paid health plan.” “Health insurance” is a term-of-art, we all know what we are talking about, and the “health insurance isn’t insurance” line isn’t persuading anybody.
It isn’t persuading idiots that have no idea what insurance is; which is why the mob, no matter how much they scream and whine, should have no say in the result. Not even our corrupt congress critters are adults.
Anybody with half a brain could fix the problem… but they have to keep the rabble without a brain from taking over.
Some communist countries have problems with getting small businesses started because the rabble have been taught not to trust business people, never understanding that consumers in a free market are pretty much all the regulation that is required.
America in many ways has been transformed into a country with a communist outlook without even realizing it.
p.s. it’s also not health insurance if the deductible is so high you can’t use it.
“Can we lay to rest this complaint “health insurance isn’t really ‘insurance’”?”
No.
Why?
Because the Democrat/Socialists use the language to bamboozle people.
It’s insurance if you buy it voluntarily and the rate you pay is based upon actuarial tables. The Insurance company gets to make a profit and you get to pick the insurance that fits your situation.
Once it’s Medicaid – which is where a LOT of Obamacide people got – it’s government-paid Health CARE.
Once you are forced to buy it, it’s not insurance it’s a tax. You use the roads and you must pay taxes for that. You use health services and you now MUST pay taxes for that.
There is one advantage of a pre-paid health plan you aren’t talking about. With such a plan, your clinic bills the Plan, the Plan (insert egregious ethnic slur)’s the charge to some small fraction of what was billed, then the Plan decides that you owe that fraction of the original bill, and then you pay it, all of it, especially if you haven’t “met your deductible.”
So a person has “health insurance” these days but ends up paying for all of the bill, but the health insurance has acted as your “muscle” and got the bill reduced for you. A lot. So if you don’t have “health insurance”, you pay three times as much?
Or you could have honest up front pricing and let the consumer select a health provider for routine procedures in a proper free market.
Yesterday my wife, the amazing KfK, was reading all of the news stories about how many tens of millions of people would “lose their insurance.” She pointed out to me that in almost every story, buried past the midpoint, would be the observation that a majority of them would be people who didn’t want health insurance, but were forced to buy it under Obamacare.
That didn’t strike either of us as much of a “loss.”
All the arguments made for Obamacare or some Republican ObamacareLite that I have seen are all variations on the classic Argument from Pity fallacy.
Yesterday my wife, the amazing KfK
I am trying to remember back to your previous comments but my memory is fuzzy. Are some belated congratulations in order here?
It’s a very recent development (last Friday, in fact). Thank you very much.
Awesome, way to go MfK 🙂
A most deceptive turn of phrase calling a choice not to continue buying coverage as “loss of coverage”.
Health Insurance is only a subsidiary consideration to the proceedings in Washington. It’s all about keeping the House in Republican hands, or at least losing the fewest possible congressional seats.
Isn’t it strange that so many people who were elected due in large part to opposition to Obamacare think that they will lose their seats if it is done away with?
No, because the Megaphone blasting out the Narrative is loud, and it is implacably relentless.
The news is brimming with stories about advocates, treated as news coverage rather than a polemic.
Isn’t it strange that so many people who were elected due in large part to opposition to Obamacare think that they will lose their seats if it is done away with?
A bad situation can always be made worse.
Crazy idea: I want a health savings account to deal with normal medical expenses, and insurance for catastrophes.
Exactly – and that’s what I had before the lying sack of excrement (“If you like your plan, you can keep your plan, period!”) and his henchmen took it away. A nice, simple, major-medical-only plan with a high deductible. It cost me just over a grand a year. For regular expenses, like checkups, injuries, etc, I paid out of pocket (and got to choose better providers due to paying). No problem. My net yearly medical cost was considerably less than if I had a “full coverage” plan, because of the price differential.
And that is what I want again; to be able to pick what I want in my policy, not have some meddling government moron doing it.
Same here but my high deductible was $5,000 lower than it is now.
Yeah, the “high” deductible I had was $5000 – about what an Obamacare policy would be (I’m not sure on what those are now – I took one look back in the first year, and said, “hell no!”).
All this reminds me of when a mover tried to sell me insurance to cover the deductible (for damage the movers did!). The deductible was $500 (so, under the contract terms, that was my max out-of-pocket risk). The cost of the insurance to avoid said $500 risk? $513. I had great fun blasting that mover out (including letting him know he’d lost the moving contract) over that.
My old deductible was $2000, which was high at the time. I never hit it. The new one is over $7000. For a while, I believed Jim when he said there was an out of pocket cap but that turns out to be a lie as well.
By the bye, I don’t understand why people think that Health Savings Accounts are a good idea. I need to guess at the beginning of the year how much my health care will be for the year. If I guess well, I save some on taxes. If I underguess, I lose taxes. If I overguess, I lose the HSA money. Why is this a good idea?
Just say that the first ___ you spend out-of-pocket on health care is deductible. Nice and simple.
That’s what’s called a “Health SERVICE Account”, not a “Health SAVINGS Account”, which is what most people talk about when they say “HSA”. A Service account is exactly what you said, you put money in at the first of the year and lose what you don’t spend. A Savings account is exactly that, a bank account that you put money into, which accumulates interest and does not go away, ever. You aren’t taxed on what you take out, as long as it’s for actual medical expenses. You get a debit card like your ATM card that you can use like a debit card, and the amount you spend goes toward your deductible. You can also move HSAs around, like IRAs, as long as you can get a qualified catastrophic plan. The HSavingsAccount is one of the best things they came up with, which is no wonder why the Democrats want to get rid of it.
Thanks! ———–
That’s what’s called a “Health SERVICE Account”, not a “Health SAVINGS Account”
The term I think more people are familiar with that meet’s Mike’s description is a Flex Spending Account for medical purposes. Those are the “use it or lose it” types of accounts offered in many businesses. As you accurately pointed out, that’s quite different from a Health Savings Account.
Yeah, I started seeing both with similar acronyms when I renewed my plan with my employer. I had to keep double-checking to make sure I kept my savings account and not accidently switching.
Why do the democrats so hate the idea of Health =Savings= accounts? Not enough opportunities for graft or them imposing control.
An FSA isn’t so bad, not as good as an HSA but still has its uses. It isn’t really for unexpected health issues but for things you can plan out like eye exams, dentist trips, treatment for chronic conditions. Or if you want/need a non-emergency surgery like lasik.
When all the policies are geared towards increasing demand while decreasing supply, the outcome is pretty much foreordained. If you want costs to decline while covering more people, you have to stimulate competition, and goose the supply. There is no other way.
What we are doing is akin to diet gimmicks. If you want to lose weight, eat less and exercise. But, no. Everyone wants a magic pill that allows them to indulge without any consequences. And, it never, ever, ever works. Yet, the lesson is never learned, and the exuberance for diet fads never fades.
When all the policies are geared towards increasing demand while decreasing supply, the outcome is pretty much foreordained.
Excellent way to frame the problem.