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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDo I have this right? If you remove the mandate...
I don't have a doctor or health insurance so I go to the emergency room with chest pains (angina). The pain subsides in the E R room as angina often does but the attending physician orders a heart doppler which reveals a blockage. The ER physician says the threat is imminent but not immediate and I will need a bypass.
I then go home and buy a $300.00 a month policy that a health care insurance company is compelled to sell me to cover a two hundred thousand dollar surgery.
Even the Family guy can see the flaw in this. This is f--king nuts.
ExciteBike66
(2,393 posts)According to Paul Ryan, you would be charged an extra 30% on your policy, which means a whole $90 a month! If you had to pay $90 extra a month, you surely wouldn't want to buy a policy to cover that $200,000 operation. Right Dr. Paul Ryan? Right?
livetohike
(22,169 posts)condition. I think they removed that too, or they were talking about it yesterday. We are all screwed and the insurance companies win again.
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,719 posts)If the hospital refused their only alternative is to have him or her arrested for trespassing after warning if he or she doesn't leave. No hospital wants that kind of negative publicity, and if he is arrested the gubmint has to pay for the bypass because he or she becomes their charge while in custody.
Justice
(7,188 posts)BainsBane
(53,127 posts)The more it becomes clear that allowing people to buy into medicare is the most logical solution. If the GOP is so big on choice, why not give people the choice to purchase medicare or a private plan?
shenmue
(38,506 posts)former9thward
(32,136 posts)The exact same thing. Which is why both plans are doomed to failure. Which is why more and more insurance companies are fleeing Obamacare every year. Have you not noticed that?
burnbaby
(685 posts)wait 30 days now before any operation. However, if you get hurt or sick you are covered immediately. Their reasoning for this is people were only buying insurance if they knew they needed an operation or rehab stuff and then dropping it.
If everyone signed up for insurance ACA would be fine. It's because of what I mentioned above that is draining the funds.
former9thward
(32,136 posts)There are tens of millions uninsured and that will continue. The concept makes no economic sense which is why insurance companies are pulling out of it which will cause rates to rise rapidly for the remainder. It is a vicious circle without end.
Tanuki
(14,930 posts)unless you have a defined "qualfying event" such as losing your job-based health plan, etc. An uninsured person cannot simply get bad news in the ER and go purchase an ACA plan at any given time. They would have to wait for the next open enrollment period. If someone in the OP's scenario went to the ER today, they would not have ACA coverage until January 2018 because they missed the deadline for this year. At least the ACA tried to mandate universal participation, in the interest of diversifying the,risk pool.
former9thward
(32,136 posts)And still tens of millions ignore it. It makes no economic sense and will fail. You can't stop ocean tides and you can't stop people from doing what is in their economic interest.
Uben
(7,719 posts)Well big fucking whoop, mine went up 60% last year alone! I had no claims other than yearly check-up. We are being sold down the river by the idiots that want that insurance campaign money. They don't give a damn about us, its all about them. It always is!
Until we take insurance companies out of the equation, healthcare will never be affordable. Single payer... nothing else will work
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,719 posts)In ten years it is supposed to come down by 10%.
mythology
(9,527 posts)That leaves 20% to pay for employees, infrastructure and profit (for those insurance companies that are for profit companies). The increase in your premiums isn't due to an insurance company wanting more money as they'd have to refund money. It's primarily driven by the increase in pharmacy costs as well as increased medical use.
Most of the rest of the industrialized world doesn't have single payer and they get by just fine.
former9thward
(32,136 posts)Pharmacy costs are insane compared with the rest of the world and the rest of the world does not have the overweight problem to the extent we have. That causes most of the chronic diseases and other medical issues.
Tanuki
(14,930 posts)CEO salaries off the top of patient care dollars. The ACA limits the insrance companies' tax write-off to the first $500k in CEO salary, but that would have been lifted under the AHCA. They admitted under committee questioning that an insurance company would be able to pay their CEO $100 million if they wanted to and write it all off.
wishstar
(5,272 posts)Under ACA, many people even with serious conditions didn't want to apply for "'Obamacare" despite the mandate, until absolutely necessary so they waited until they desperately needed medical care and then had to wait for enrollment period and for the insurance to take effect that following January. Often resulting in much more costly care than if they had gotten their conditions treated earlier. That is main reason insurance companies underestimated how much their premiums would have to be under ACA to be profitable, because people needed such costly services by the time they applied.
Insurance company lobbyists are steering the ACA replacement, so any replacement will have at least as limited an enrollment period each year, so if a person fails to enroll, they have to wait until the next yearly enrollment period plus suffer a lifetime 30% surcharge for delayed enrollment
burnbaby
(685 posts)if you lose your insurance during the year you can sign up and get insurance like I post above. I did it
wishstar
(5,272 posts)If you change jobs causing lost coverage or getting married or having baby - special enrollment applies
roamer65
(36,748 posts)Your surgery simply would be scheduled and the problem fixed. No insurance BS involved.
beachbum bob
(10,437 posts)under current ACA, yes you could do this