Bubba Gets Caught Telling The Truth About 0bamacare

[Spartanmack]

We also don't cover paint and light bulbs regular maintenance stuff with homeowner's insurance. Step one to a real fix for our health system is to realize that it is beyond stupid to have insurance for regular maintenance. Insurance drives up costs in exchange for distributing risk. Insurance for things that happen often is a racket. Whether we want the government to subsidize or not subsidize common healthcare issues and how much is a separate issue, but right now our healthcare is structured like homeowners insurance that covers light bulbs and auto insurance that covers gasoline. And we wonder why it's so expensive and argue over the regulation of this screwed up system.

Whether something should be covered as part of an insurance plan is completely different from allowing someone to buy insurance after an incident. we don't cover paint and light bulbs with regular insurance because we want our insurance to be cheap. When it comes to healthcare, the "paint and light bulbs" are pretty expensive and can be priced into insurance plans people are willing to pay for. If you want insurance to be cheaper, deregulate it, don't require those services to be covered and competitors will offer lower cost plans that don't cover well visits and routine care - and the prices for those services could go down then as fewer people demand them. I'm sure Turd will say that's now how the world and the economy works, but he's an idiot because that is precisely how it would work.

And it's not structured like those in the first place. For one, auto insurance that covers gas would be more like health insurance that picks up your grocery bill. But it's still different than the paint and light bulbs analogy. There is a calculated cost benefit to providing well care and routine medical services. Paint and light bulbs won't prevent a tree from falling on your house but a regular routine physical, well-care and doctor visits for seemingly routine aches, pains, etc can screen for potentially life threatening illnesses. Covering birth control or elective procedures like sterilization are cheaper than pre-natal care, births and covering a child. They're maintenance items, but they save $ in the long run.

 

[Spartanmack]

Doesn't matter. They still cost more if covered by insurance. There's no free lunch here.

yeah, i edited my post and made that point - if you want insurance to be cheaper, deregulate it and don't require those services to be covered. Give consumer's choices and competitors flexibility to cater to those choices. Demand will go down when people have to pay for routine stuff and well care and prices would respond.

 

[Gulo Blue]

Whatever you pay for through insurance costs more on average than it would if not covered by insurance and paid for directly. That's the trade off, distributed risk in exchange for higher cost. If it is a very common thing for a person to encounter, it is stupid to have insurance for it. It may be very expensive, but you pay for it either way.

 

[Gulo Blue]

yeah, i edited my post and made that point - if you want insurance to be cheaper, deregulate it and don't require those services to be covered. Give consumer's choices and competitors flexibility to cater to those choices. Demand will go down when people have to pay for routine stuff and well care and prices would respond.

The choice we need to have is a far less expensive insurance that only covers really catastrophic things (you mention it as something deregulation could bring, but I don't think it would.) But it would crush the insurance industry. They love having their fingers in everything (making some percentage off everything.)

 

[Spartanmack]

You're doing the calculation for the insurance company instead of the consumer.

The analogy doesn't work so great there only because there isn't a lot of preventative care out there that everybody is doing all the time that would impact homeowners and auto insurance. But let's just say they did. Let's say everybody hired tree services to remove trees because trees falling on houses was a more common thing. Homeowner's insurance companies start covering tree removal services because it saves them money. Do you honestly think prices are going down for homeowners? Of course not. Through the price of insurance, they're going to pay for that tree removal service, plus the additional cost associated with insurance administration and management.

That's right - the analogy doesn't work so great. That's my point.

Where did I say prices were going down for consumers? Prices are clearly skyrocketing. And I'm not sure what point you're trying to make - I'm the one arguing for deregulating health insurance. I'm fine if carriers aren't forced to cover well care or routine items. In a less or more wisely regulated environment, you'd end up with a variety of plans that do and don't cover "maintenance" type items and consumers can choose.

As for the tree removal example - that's a little better. The difference is consumer's aren't used to insurance covering those items and they don't get their P&C coverage through their employer. They actually get bills and cut checks for their P&C premiums - it's not a line item they barely notice on their paycheck. Consumers have become accustomed to well care and are basically oblivious to the cost. Again, deregulate insurance or at least change the regulations, give carriers the flexibility to offer a broad range of products and let consumer choose what works for them. People who get their coverage through their employer will likely have fewer options in order to get the best group rates, but if they don't like the group plans, they can always opt out.

 

[Spartanmack]

The choice we need to have is a far less expensive insurance that only covers really catastrophic things (you mention it as something deregulation could bring, but I don't think it would.) But it would crush the insurance industry. They love having their fingers in everything (making some percentage off everything.)

Why not? That's what it was like before or at least very close. That's basically what my brother had with his high deductible plan before it was killed by Obamacare.

And I actually think it's more important to tear down the walls - allow consumers to shop across state lines for health insurance. Nothing will drive down prices faster than competition. Maybe changing minimum coverage requirements is a big part of that - I don't know. If you do them together, prices should go down more and faster.

 

[Gulo Blue]

There's the other half of it. We never should have made it something companies provided for people. I get the reasoning behind employee welfare costing a company something, but we've taken the consumer mostly out of the picture, and that's another reason things are so bad.

If it was 100% transparent, a-la cart, and driven by consumers, we'd have completely different insurance. If it was like all the electronics insurance you (hopefully) turn down in stores, I think it would be clear.

You want strep throat coverage it's X dollars a month. And a visit for strep throat is Y. You'd see most of this stuff isn't worth covering.

 

[Gulo Blue]

Why not?

Because insurance companies wrote Obamacare. Why would they give it up? People are used to it. It's like breaking up price fixing. It takes more than deregulation.

 

[Spartanmack]

Whatever you pay for through insurance costs more on average than it would if not covered by insurance and paid for directly. That's the trade off, distributed risk in exchange for higher cost. If it is a very common thing for a person to encounter, it is stupid to have insurance for it. It may be very expensive, but you pay for it either way.

that's the morale risk of insurance - with P&C, people are less risk averse because they're insured, with health insurance, people hear their kid sneeze so they take him/her to the doctor because it's covered. Demand goes up, prices go up. Doctors bill as much as they can and consumers don't care because they think they're not paying for it.

 

[Spartanmack]

Because insurance companies wrote Obamacare. Why would they give it up? People are used to it. It's like breaking up price fixing. It takes more than deregulation.

Obamacare takes more power away from consumers. They may not voluntarily give it up, but take away power legislated to them, and they'll have to.

 

[Spartanmack]

There's the other half of it. We never should have made it something companies provided for people. I get the reasoning behind employee welfare costing a company something, but we've taken the consumer mostly out of the picture, and that's another reason things are so bad.

If it was 100% transparent, a-la cart, and driven by consumers, we'd have completely different insurance. If it was like all the electronics insurance you (hopefully) turn down in stores, I think it would be clear.

You want strep throat coverage it's X dollars a month. And a visit for strep throat is Y. You'd see most of this stuff isn't worth covering.

It's not just employer's who benefit though. Employee's benefit by getting group rates. There's always a trade-off. Unfortunately, people just don't care about what really matters to them.

https://youtu.be/Y-GxcejOlFA?t=151

go to 2:31 if you're not patient. I added the time stamp to the URL but for some reason DSF makes you watch the whole thing. If you copy the url and open it in a new browser, it works.