insurance is not 'stealing' money.

It's a risk spreading mechanism, it was instrumental in allowing the age of discovery when ships going out to 'America' could easily sink and captains had to find people to 'underwrite' their ventures. In exchange for a premium payment, the underwriters of the venture promised to pay a fixed amount of money to the investors in case the ship sinks. This provided a floor for losses for the investors in case the ship did sink, and allowed for a 'market' to develop. Modern insurance operates in much the same way.

The insurance industry was built on capital. If you only knew of the insurance capitalists playing the stock market buys on their bets and shorts and options, your head might explode.

The insurers could count of a percentage of all trips succeeding, thus not needing a payout, thus, the premium money collected can cover their costs, including a profit margin! SOCIALISM!

Watch less Fox News plz.

Edit: Urge to buy a gun? Threats on the internet when losing an argument? Should a mod be contacted? are you the next Jared Lee Loughner ?

it is stealing money if you are required to purchase it. it's grand theft. extortion. wealth care.

you feel threatened because cops shoot people for stealing money?

Dibs, think of it this way. If you are NOT required to purchase it and you get sick and the government steps in to pay your bill cause you accidentally shot your balls off and had to see a testicle re-attachment specialist on government disability, you're technically also stealing from the public. Cause you paid nothing into it and the public is footing the bill.

With a mandate to insure, at least there's some guarantee you've actually paid into the system before you use it.

This is the typical get your hands off my medicare argument. Ironic, but very instructive.

Anyways, this has been a fun election to watch. I'm done arging here :P

only problem is that the government doesn't pay for my health care. if i don't have the money, they send me a bill. if i don't pay it, they put me into collections and place liens on my property. when does the government start paying the bill?

and what about the 2/3rds of the nation who don't make enough money to pay income tax and won't be required to purchase health insurance or pay a tax penalty? how are you going to make them pay into the system?

Dex, I don't know who you are, but you might want to stop making well-reasoned, logical and factually relevant posts around here. These people don't take kindly to that...


And LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL at the 'kenyan muslim' thing. Idiots like you still say stuff like that and wonder why you just lost the election handily??

It absolutely was about the economy. Repubs lost because a greater % of people blamed teh state of the economy on Bush then on Obama. Look at the exit polls.

Dex why are things like birth control covered by insurance. Usually you insure against POSSIBLE costs, not known ones. Insuring against known costs is ridiculous. It's like trying to purchase insurance on a car about to participate in a demolition derby.

I respect your hard work and commitment to getting ahead, ut I think you're misguided in understanding opportunity.

I think you're looking at it from the perspective that something will be taken away from you rather than looking at what's already been taken away from you. Ask yourself why did the cost of your education increase when the economy was stagnant to sinking? When inflation was non-existent? Why are costs rising on par with aid increases? What's driving the cost curve? You're in school, do the research. I think you would be surprised by the outcomes.

You may not agree or see it, but Republicans are arguing for opportunity. Let me give you a localized example. I know a Republican delegate who contacted the Maryland Department of the Environment about adjusting their regulatory policy on posting signage for dentist's offices and x-ray machines. Essentially, the regulation required the dentist to post a notice to employees about the potential use of an x-ray regardless of whether they even were employees. One popular local dentist was shut down. He ran his business entirely on his own with his wife. There were no employees. No hygenists. Yet he didn't post the notice because the notice would be from him to himself. The MDE shut him down for two days, demanding to inspect everything he did because he didn't post the notice. The worst part is no one ever communicated to him that he had to post the notice. It was two days of him cancelling bookings, two days of lost profits, and so on. It was an unecessary regulatory burden for him to jump and STILL the MDE refuses to adjust the regulation.

There are countless situations just like this that represent opportunity vs obstacle. I want a government that isn't an obstacle to these small businesses providing opportunities and excelling their communities. If you think more money to your university is going to decrease cost then go ahead believing it. But ask yourself why the university doesn't have some form of prorated tuition for those with less economic means given their alleged goal is to educate, not to profit, right? Be wary of bureaucracy, particularly those who create systems rewarding tons of top officers with nice salaries.

Good luck with your college career and hopefully with an economic rebound.

@bobby. Some items on insurance are indeed not true insurance as they are known costs that the claimants can control.

Most private health insurance covers birth control because contraception is ultimately cheaper than abortion or carrying to term and a birth. That's not to mention contraception allows for family
Planning which helps the economy as women aren't forced into motherhood before they are are ready.

In that context it is not ridiculous but good business practices. A good part of insurance is to cover low cost preventative stuff that prevents higher cost problems later.

This is totally non political but again Republicans shirt on it to satisfy their base. The fact that they are advocating against good policy doesn't matter

Funny how the investors are pulling money out of the markets. DOW took it's biggest hit of the year one day after Nobama was reelected DIJA and S&P will also continue to decline. Here is my pro bono advice for you, increase your portfolio with recession proof stocks for the time being. This is going to continue to be one heck of a recession now that he is back in.

you are absolutely correct about that dex. Very poor example on my end. But the asymmetric information with regards to health insurance is a real issue. And Obamacare makes it way worse.

I only brought it up because you were discussing the utility of insurance as a hedge against risks. And a hedge against risks is far from how I'd describe our current health insurance system. Our car insurance and homeowners insurance absolutely. Health no way. To be clear: not attacking you, or even anything you posted at all, just making my own point really...

YOU also have to consider that a human life is not an inanimate object.

The argument i am making is that to have an effective insurance market risk must be spread or all you will have are sick people running up the bill and not being able to afford the premiums. And without a wide net for insurance the healthy will play the risk of being uninsured until they get sick, at which point the personal costs become excessive and the public still foots the bill in the format of ER costs as the uninsured go to the ER as their last resort with conditions that could have been treated more cheaply earlier had they had insurance to cover the costs

It is good policy to cover everyone. Conservative anger is misplaced.

I realize those concerns. That's why, to deal with them, I'm for either universal care or government coverage of preexisting conditions.

The main issues with Obamacare I have are forcing coverage of pre-existing conditions which will raise rates on those in the individual pool b/c of asymmetry of information. The far greater concern for me is that Obamacare solidifies even more the very inefficient tying of health insurance to employment.

Yes but you also have a larger pool if people to spread the risk on. Romney and Obama care are massive giveaways to private insurers. They get all these new premium paying customers. It is a reasonable trade off to ask them to cover more. Besides opposing pre existing coverage is a non starter for even some Republicans as it is a popular measure.

Most Republic opposition is on the universality aspect which you actually support.

i didn't come here to support republican ideas heh?

Not saying you are. :) Just noting Obama and Romney care are based on Repub free market alternative proposed to Clinton plan in 1994. It really amazing watching the party gobto war with its old self, and some Republicans still think they own moderates. I Lol at that.

Actually, they said any repeal and replace effort would include provisions for maintaining the prex-existing conditions clause. And not even in vague language, they were very clear on it.

Your pooling point is correct in reducing the cost, albeit it's really only relevant to forcing those under 35 to carry insurance because they're the portion of the population that health insurance makes significant money on. Either way, it's still not addressing the root of the problem, increasing health care costs.

You can insure everyone and their pets, but that doesn't necessarily drive down the cost. I recognize Obamacare has pursued quality based measures that tie quality and cost to a modifier, but again it's really not driving down costs. The notions of shares savings and cooridinated care are great, but again, not driving down the cost. Ultimately it's the cost that's the underlying problem. And honestly, neither side has really professed much of any answer to this problem.

The secondary problem being who should bare the burden of the cost and for what services. The Republicans contend introducing competition will maximize returns against Medicare (they're not alone, the idea was introduced by Alice Rivilin originally, not by Paul Ryan--he adopted it). The Democrats contend that this notion of vouchers will ultimately destroy Medicare. One thing is for certain, we can't continue funding at this level through 2050 without some sort of miraculous cost reduction methodology, people paying more out of pocket, the system going bankrupt, or people being 80% healthier (and not by costly medical means). And....that's all assuming people don't live ridiculously longer despite continued trends of it.

So, solutions?

Busy at work but Romney was short on details on just about everything he promised to repeal and replace.

Not worth the risk of the tea party screwing that unknown plan from Romney.

The solution to controlling health care costs is really quite simple. Just because a medicine or medical technology exists doesn't entitle every American to its use.

The real problem is getting someone elected who says that.

If you get oral cancer at 87...too bad. I'm not in favor of medicare paying the roughly $70k a year it will cost to treat. You are 87. You had a good run.

I'd also be in favor of universal health care with some amount of benefits based on how much you paid in. Ie if you were a high income individual who paid lots of taxes over the years you are entitled to more health care then someone on welfare their entier life. Sorry I'm not sorry.

For example, an individual is entitled to care up to 50% of what they paid in, no matter how high this number. After that the restrictions on care based on age/disease kick in. So for example a 25 year old is treated for oral cancer. An 87 year old who paid 5 million in taxes and was relatively healthy is treated for oral cancer. An 87 year old on welfare their whole life who gets oral cancer, no treatment.

Again, sorry I'm not sorry.

@bobby that is a related issue. The solution is to convene experts to determine which procedures produces the best outcome at the lowest cost. But recall the tea party and Palin called them death panels and half of the country freaked out.

When a party is so obviously against common sense you know that they can't be trusted

I absolutely recall that, and I railed to my conservative friends that we should not be scoring political points with regards to death panels.

I really have very little in common with repubs on health care. My agreement with them is on abortion, religious freedom, immigration policy, tax policy and to some extent foreign policy.

End of life care (I think they define it as last year) is about 30% of Medicare costs.

CBO just released a report that does say that repealing the expansion of coverage would save $150 billion a year (in 2020), but that would also increase number of people w/o insurance up to 29 million.
http://www.cbo.gov/...8-12-DeficitReduction.pdf

Since some folks seem to think we can tax our way out, I hope they read CBO's latest take.

Bobby, have you thought that your process would work better without the government involvement? Think of it in terms of buying your own insurance. You pay for certain things to be covered, at a premium. Want more covered? Pay more. There is no reason for the government to make a decision on whether anyone will get care, because it will be in the hands of that individual.

This is the problem with the government being involved at all in healthcare. Halfway only makes the problem worse because people don't pay and get care. The only way a government can get involved is a full scale takeover, but then they will decide who lives and who dies. In the end you end up with a 2 class system where people with enough money to pay the government healthcare costs on top of private costs get the care they want and another class of citizens who can't and don't.

Patience: Mitt Romney is not against abortion in all cases. That was a lie spread by the Democrats. Barack Obama was against gay marriage until a few months ago. Those are both minor issues. Romney almost got elected because of the economy. Barack Obama has been hostile to business and failed to fix the unemployment problem. He has made high unemployment and sluggish growth the 'new normal'. Therefore, a large majority of productive people went with Romney.

Unsympathetic: Bob Woodward is not a Republican mouth piece. That is an insane comment. Did you not see his books on Bush?

huh? i'm glad that you'll be linking in the evidence to support those statements. well, then again, i should make a check of my xbox's ability to gather information. though it'll be pretty much useless for flash or pdf evidence. ahhh, 26% of foreign debt... 8% total... well, that's one down...