Obamacare Cost Per State

[RonD1120 62]

Only five New England states get a decrease.


http://www.ijreview.com/2013/09/81096-explosion-healthcare-premiums-founding-fathers-apparently/

Look for the shiny things of God revealed by the Holy Spirit. They only last for an instant but it is a Holy Instant. Let your soul absorb them.

[weekender 0]

RonD1120

Only five New England states get a decrease.


http://www.ijreview.com/2013/09/81096-explosion-healthcare-premiums-founding-fathers-apparently/

NY and NJ have very high rates because they are highly regulated by the states already. That probably explains them being in the blue. the more the gov't mandates you must cover the higher the premiums, pretty simple stuff. Its somewhat blunted by the fact our incomes are also higher usually.

I still firmly believe it would be cheaper if the gov't allowed people to by policies they wanted and not ones special interest groups wanted us to buy. I dont want to pay for chiropractic care or massage therapy and should not be forced too. I am fully willing to pay cash for a massage and fake Dr's.

"The point is, I'm weird, but I never felt weird."
John Frusciante

[GeorgiaDon 380]

I'm not inclined to give such forecasts much credibility until they offer some information about their methods. If you're talking about 22 year old non-smoking non-drinking non-skydiving types, you're going to get a very different answer than if you ask about 55-year-olds with a serious sickness or two in their medical history. It's pretty easy to bias such a "study" to get the result you want.

One issue I have not seen discussed re the ACA is the effect on lifetime expenses for medical insurance and health care. If you think about things from a cradle-to-grave perspective, paying a bit more when you're young in exchange for lower premiums when you get older might be a good deal. Paying higher premiums when you are young in exchange for being able to get insurance at all after you've had a serious illness may be a great deal.

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[RonD1120 62]

GeorgiaDon

I'm not inclined to give such forecasts much credibility until they offer some information about their methods. If you're talking about 22 year old non-smoking non-drinking non-skydiving types, you're going to get a very different answer than if you ask about 55-year-olds with a serious sickness or two in their medical history. It's pretty easy to bias such a "study" to get the result you want.

One issue I have not seen discussed re the ACA is the effect on lifetime expenses for medical insurance and health care. If you think about things from a cradle-to-grave perspective, paying a bit more when you're young in exchange for lower premiums when you get older might be a good deal. Paying higher premiums when you are young in exchange for being able to get insurance at all after you've had a serious illness may be a great deal.

Don

Good point, however, burdening the working population with such increases in a recessive economy is not advisable. Unless, the purpose is to reduce entrepreneurial capitalism to advance socialism. The government is not concerned with the people. It is concerned with power and control. It is a progressive movement started apparently by T. Roosevelt and W. Wilson. I doubt we can stop it. They have us arguing about Democrat vs. Republican and not noticing what the big picture really is. Be prepared for SHTF.

Look for the shiny things of God revealed by the Holy Spirit. They only last for an instant but it is a Holy Instant. Let your soul absorb them.

[GeorgiaDon 380]

Quote

...burdening the working population with such increases in a recessive economy is not advisable. Unless, the purpose is to reduce entrepreneurial capitalism to advance socialism. The government is not concerned with the people. It is concerned with power and control.

Health insurance premiums and medical costs have gone up faster that any other category of expenditures I can think of, every year I have been in the US work force. The US economy puts a larger share into the medical arena than any other advanced industrial nation, a share that increases every year, yet receives value that is no better than many other countries. This expense is a huge drag on the US economy. When we spend $50,000 for a procedure that costs $10,000 elsewhere, that's $40,000 we do not have to invest in building factories or other things that might result in actual wealth/job creation.

Arguments that the ACA costs too much completely ignore the fact that medical insurance premiums have been increasing at a rate well above inflation for a long time, and show no signs of slowing down, while excluding an ever larger fraction of the population. It also conveniently ignores the fact that medical expenses have long been the leading cause of bankruptcies, even amongst people with medical insurance. Of course it is now all too easy to blame every increase on the ACA, pretending that all was perfect before that socialist Obama took the reigns.

All insurance companies are in the business of making money, and they all do that by collecting (and investing) premiums while limiting payouts. The practice to this point has been to limit payouts to the minimum needed to maintain credibility (no-one would buy their policies if they never paid out on anything) by cherry picking the healthy, dropping clients who start to "cost too much", and limiting covered services. That's to be expected from unregulated "entrepreneurial capitalism". It's also about the only way to stay in business in such a market, no-one will be able to compete if their policy is to cover lots of high risk customers even if they wanted to. This model leads to fewer and fewer people being covered, for less and less, at greater expense. This is the inevitable result of a completely hands-off, let the marketplace alone decide, approach.

An alternative approach is to enact regulations to create a level playing field that stipulate a minimum level of services provided and prevent insurers from kicking customers out once they start to make claims against their policies. It helps the insurers out to increase the size of the potential client pool by requiring everybody to purchase coverage, and that also addresses a growing problem of people using medical services without actually paying for them. This is what the ACA does. Not saying it's perfect, but I think many of the imperfections arise from the effort to preserve the old system (many private insurers) instead of going whole hog to a single payer system.

You may choose to believe that all government employees are motivated only by the desire to exercise power over regular working stiffs. I know many people, working at the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, who work long hours for less pay (and more abuse) than they would get in the private sector, for the chance to work on problems that are challenging and that make a difference, improving the lives of perhaps millions of people. People take for granted all the basic research that must be done to advance a field before private industry takes any interest in becoming involved, all the work that has to be done to ensure a relatively very safe supply of food and medications, and on and on.

I know there are some here who feel the government should stay out of virtually everything. If robber barons monopolize essential services, you just have to pay. If the economy collapses too bad so sad, not their problem. Have your kidneys killed by E. coli? It's up to you to figure out where it came from and then try to sue whoever sold you the contaminated food (Ron Paul's position, by the way). Got cancer from contaminated water? Same deal, you're on your own. For better or worse, most Americans feel the government does have a role in keeping things on a relatively even keel, promoting the "general welfare" and all that.

The medical system in the US has been on track to seriously damage the economy, sucking up more and more of the resources while providing services to fewer people, bankrupting many of them in the process. The US has been far behind the curve, compared to every other Western democracy, in trying to address the issue. It would be completely irresponsible to continue to ignore the problem, as per Republican and Libertarian policy, IMHO.

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[RonD1120 62]

I think you missed the point about employers reducing employee hours to avoid providing healthcare. Thus the burden for insurance is shifted to the individual with less income. Not to mention the fines incurred for not purchasing Obamacare or the necessity of hiring government instructors to guide them through the sixty page application.

Look for the shiny things of God revealed by the Holy Spirit. They only last for an instant but it is a Holy Instant. Let your soul absorb them.

[turtlespeed 226]

RonD1120

I think you missed the point about employers reducing employee hours to avoid providing healthcare. Thus the burden for insurance is shifted to the individual with less income. Not to mention the fines incurred for not purchasing Obamacare or the necessity of hiring government instructors to guide them through the sixty page application.

But its for the greater gooooooooooood.[/whine]

shakes head

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun