According to Gallup the rate of uninsured people in America has fallen by 22% down to 13.4% since Obamacare started.



http://www.vox.com/2014/6/5/5782320/...care-kicked-in



I know there is a lot of controversy regarding the individual responsibility program. That being said, people will now get to live happier, healthier, and more productive lives because they can now get the health insurance they deserve and need.



What say you OT?

 

The other part of the story is 'how many of these people are actually buying insurance, and how many are on 'expanded' medicaid. Good luck prying THAT number out of the works.

 

The best part of the story is that it doesn't matter. Either way, expanded coverage means fewer unpaid bills to jack up the expense for those who do pay the bills.

 

Several of my family members were dropped from their insurance and forced to seek Obamacare coverage, and at a significant increase. My cousin is self employed, and since Kaiser dropped him he has chosen to pay the penalty rather than twice the price for health insurance.

 

I'm paying the fine because it's 7.5 times less expensive than getting Obamacare would be for me and my daughter. My quote was $375 per month which is $4500 per year. I can't currently reasonably afford $375 per month.



At Obamacare bronze level I would still be responsible for 40% of any medical costs incurred with the exception of the few things covered at 100% that I wouldn't be using anyways and I could afford if I wanted to do without any coverage.



Unless I spent $7500 out of pocket for medical bills in a year it's cheaper to be uninsured. That's 40% of $7500 ($3000) plus my premiums of $4500.



Currently if I get injured and need $20,000 worth of treatment in a year it costs me $20,000.

With Obamacare if I get injured and need $20,000 worth of treatment in a year it would cost me $8000 for the treatment (40% of $20,000) and my premiums ($4500) so $12,500.



If I can't afford $20,000 out of pocket I probably also can't afford $12,500 out of pocket.



If we are going to socialize healthcare let's socialize healthcare. That's not what this is, this is forcing people into a broken system.

 

As I've said 100 times, forcing people who couldn't afford insurance before to buy insurance at a severely inflated rate is not the answer. If medicare and medicaid had to pay the market value, we wouldn't be seeing the insanely high medical bills that we do. Hence why the same procedure costs several time more here than it does in many other countries. Also how Canada, the UK and many other counties like that CAN socialize healthcare. I've posted the math numerous times. Obamacare is broken and cannot be fixed.

 

The US has the highest profit margins in healthcare on the planet. That's why it's so expensive. Profit is good. Gouging is not.

 

As I have pointed out countless times, the numbers you and I see are so highly inflated because after the Government is done raping these companies they have to make overhead on the money they get from insurance payments. And as you and I know, the insurance companies don't pay but close to half what retail value is. When 70% of healthcare is required later in life or by the very sickly (IE: those that have Medicare) and 28% of the rest comes from insurance, of course the numbers we see are inflated a F*CK. Do the math! If a procedure costs the company $200 and 70 out of 100 patients only pay $100, that's 7k for the 20k you need to make. The remaining 30 people have to make up the remaining 13k, and since insurance will only pay 50% of the sticker cost that price now has to gets jacked up to $866.67 just to cover expense; tack on overhead and just to keep the lights on you have to charge close to a grand for that $200 service. That's 5x the actual value and you've still yet to make a profit. This is why medical coverage is so expensive, the only people paying sticker price are the 2% or so that pay out of pocket. And this is all because Medicare and Medicaid can pay what ever they damn well please for a service. We suffer in the long run

 

You're talking about prices. I'm talking about profits. You say if a procedure costs the company $200 and 70 out of 100 only pay $100 (I'm assuming "the company" is the hospital and the 70 out of 100 are using Medicare), that's $7k for the $20k they need to make. Here's my question for you... In that example, is the $200 for the procedure the hospital's cost or what the hospital normally bills? If that's what they normally bill, they're cost was about $60. So the procedure cost the hospital $6k and they got paid only $7k instead of the $20k their shareholders were hoping for.

 

As stated expressly in the example, the given procedure's cost $200.

Regardless of location, hospital, hospice, local Doctors office, etc, the "business" is the service provider. Sometimes that even equates to a corporation that uses borrowed space I a medical facility with a rented nurse or practitioner. I'll give you that Doctors make a poopton of money, but that's the spoils of having to go through the amount of schooling they do, as well as constant research and skill. Not just any fool can do that job.



By and large the private companies that make the products and medicines don't largely command the profit margins people think. They see profits as a result of providing a necessary service that every human will eventually require. The inflated price tag is mostly the result of government intervention. No company stays in business by price gouging. There will always be a less expensive follow up, note that situation does not occur much in the medical field. The reason? Well, see the above post. Most doctors that refuse medicare/caid are vastly less expensive, but the problem is they don't have the customer base so it's difficult to remain in business. They're basically hedging the practice on serving already healthy people, kind of a poor business model for a doctor.