Well, what do you know—people are gaming the Obamacare system
Well, what else did its supporters expect? It was always obvious that this sort of thing could happen, and that if it could happen, it would happen:
Obamacare customers are gaming the system, buying coverage only after they find out they’re ill and need expensive care ”” a trend insurers warn is destabilizing the fledgling health law marketplaces and spiking premiums for everyone.
Insurers blame the problem on lax rules that allow more than 900,000 people to sign up for coverage outside the standard enrollment season ”” for instance, when they change jobs or move ”” without sufficient proof they are eligible. No one knows precisely how many might be manipulating the system, but the plans say they run up much higher medical bills and then jump ship, contributing to double-digit rate increases and financial losses.
Health plans also complain some customers are exploiting a three-month “grace period” ”” when they can keep getting subsidized coverage even if they’ve stopped paying their share of premiums.
Both those trends make the risk pools skew toward sicker, costlier customers ”” and under Obamacare, plans can no longer deny coverage to those with expensive medical conditions. That problem has been exacerbated by the large numbers of healthier people who are choosing to stay uninsured rather than shell out money for coverage.
So you mean that, prior to Obamacare, insurance companies weren’t just mean sons of bitches out to get you? Same for Republicans? There was actually, like, a reason insurance companies found it hard to cover pre-existing conditions? Not that a lot of states didn’t manage to do that, with high-risk pools (and some subsidizing of the high-risk pools) that—unlike Obamacare—didn’t disrupt the entire system of health insurance for healthier people, but merely supplemented it.
I know, I know, it’s all just a blip on the road to glorious single payer.
If I understand this correctly, the penalty for not buying Obamacare health insurance is deducted from the taxpayer’s income tax refund. If the taxpayer isn’t due a refund, there’s nothing to collect from. Taxpayers can file a form W-4 with their employer, instructing the employer to withhold more or less from their paycheck. The individual can thus instruct the employer to withhold a small enough amount so that the individual will owe a small amount of taxes at the end of the year. No refund, no penatly.
This sounds too simple. Certainly some other commenter can and will correct this if it’s wrong.
Cap’n Rusty:
I can’t find the link right now, but that’s exactly as I remember it.
At the time of its construction, ObamaCare’s architects assumed that we would have transitioned to single payer a few years ago.
This came out 5 1/2 years ago and many of you may have seen it, but it’s still apropos today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT3KiB2otV0
Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine shows that a large percentage of uninsured are not uninsured because of financial hardship. Some people make selfish choices! Who would have guessed?!
In 1995 Tennessee implemented Hillary care and called it Tenncare. Fraud was rampant and an estimated 25% of the enrollees were committing some sort of fraud against the system. The cost of Tenncare was 2.5 billion in 1995 and in 2004 the cost was 8 billion. It had become the largest line item in the state budget and was on its way to bankrupting the state.
I guess Tenncare is the model then.
The only question is whether Obamacare can bankrupt the country within the next 11 and a half months (so that Obama can chalk up another “achievement”—actually, that should be achievement…without the scare quotes).
Eleven and a months left. One may be tempted to ask just how much damage can Obama wreak?
To which the only answer “Do not underestimate him. Ever.”.
So the predictions by the right of what would happen if Obamacare would pass have come true.
And yet that won’t change the minds of the vast majority of Democrat voters, or _any_ of the people who implemented it.
They’ll just complain that it’s not working quite right yet and we need to do it harder.
Why is it that every single idea that Left comes up with up with completely collapses if people don’t act
perfectly moral, and yet the same left claims consistently and constantly that morals don’t matter?
Doublethink at its finest.
NeoNeocon Says:
So you mean that, prior to Obamacare, insurance companies weren’t just mean sons of bitches out to get you?
the left always thinks that what is out of their sight and control is something evil, and has something more than we imagine. maybe this is our primitive selves naturally finding reasons to go after a neighboring tribe and the true source of war, and not the acts such would employ to orchestrate its desire to happen
i have yet to meet one of those left socialists who had any idea how the insurance industry actually worked. in fact, the gruber stuff fits EXACTLY their view of such things. they saw the insurance company as a entity that invented systems that shifted things around to make them work and there was no real reasoning other than what would make them money. So they built the ACA just like that. they considered preexisting clauses to be arbitrary, and then decided they could rob peter to pay paul his arbitrary due, and so on like a house of cards with pieces leaning on each other to stand.
but anyway, years ago i worked for a company that was the core of the insurance world. this company originally had a law for it to be legal to get around antitrust laws so that it could exist the way it did. it aggregated all that data that the companies had on you and others, and all dated, and generated the rates for each company. eventually that changed to a different thing that led to the same results and called them rules and they could then change the kind of company they were listed as.
anyway, the point of what they did was to get the best numbers and the number they produced was the break even point. on top of this number different companies would add amounts approved by the government that in essence was the overhead. this new value was basically a companies break even point, and a percentage was added to that (been a while and its much more complicated than my summary).
these numbers were then put in forms that could be ordered by each company with their final amounts and shipped out after we printed them on demand.
the interesting thing was the idea of what insurances would we or could we sell which would be developed by creating different groupings of things and regression testing on historical data. dont worry the state had to approve and determine price.
today i watch some insurance commercials and to a tee i can tell you who has the highest rates given what they are saying and offering.
who can drive 9/8ths of a car? no one, but the 1/8th you pony up is kind of a deductible that allows them a bit of profit. well, if you dont do that, someone has to pay for that 1/8th they added to the payouts
or the complaint that having one accident shouldn’t be a punishment. well, those actuaries with their history and backtesting, know that once you have a first accident, your now in the pool with others highly likely to have a second and third.
Their profit is not large and if a market is forced to change in a way the state wants that kills profit, they fold up and leave that market. when shopkeepers were losing money selling in venezuela, they closed shop as there was no influx of cash from the back of the shop to allow the flow to reverse and let the money and goods go out the door with a bit extra from that non existence back flow.
Single payer will be very bad over the long haul. it HAS to be.
who needs actuarial tables of outcomes and other things when you can just cover them all and pay as you need to by robbing the piggy bank till something tightens the reigns.. and then what? where do you cut? how do you choose? how long can you hide it before the crowd knows? can it be slow enough they dont notice? how can you increase mortality to save money? (turn one freedom into another?)
Complaining about Obamacare’s consequences, the after-facts (a pun on after-effects), is futile and really sad. Principles are what matter. Those were flushed before Obamacare was “enacted” and now there will be a long game of rat-nibbling and tweaking around the edges.
It will not be revoked.
The government, via Medicare, continues to herd MDs into ever- smaller, ever-tighter sheeplike herds. Your “Primary Care Provider” can no longer admit you to a hospital. For acute illness, you are now admitted via the ER to the care of a shift-working Hospitalist employed by the hospital. But that’s OK! It’s good! You get three (count them, three!) attending physicians per 24 hours! The surgeon who operates on you is employed by the hospital.
Now come “Accountable Care Organizations” another instrument to lock MDs in. Medicare mandate. Financial penalties for not being in one.”Share all your data, whether you want to or not.” Pretty soon, your beloved gubmint will tap into all of this and so determine policies.
MDs themselves were too small a population to effectively resist this Gramscian takeover. It has taken a generation, but they got it done.
It is part of the death of decency.
At most 6 months for the most intelligent to figure out how to con and game the system. After that, everyone else jumps on the band wagon of free cash, at an exponential rate.
Lots of the time, persons save money than they conserve simply because they’re
purchasing things that they don’t need and will never use.