Affordable Care Act

onejayhawk said:
When you figure out the distinction between risk and expense, rephrase so I can tell if you figured it out.

J
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While we're on the subject, I'm still waiting for you to rephrase so that I know you have figured out the difference between "independent" and "Republican shill."
 
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onejayhawk said:
The teacher can never make the student learn. For example, you should no better than to mix terms of art, but continually do anyway.

Pre-existing conditions are not insurable. Never were. The distinction you continually skip over is that the condition is a risk factor for other issues. For example, coverage is denied for heart issues because of pre-existing diabetes. This is a completely different conversation from a person with a heart condition applying for coverage of his heart condition.

It is painfully obvious you gloss over details. Try, this once, to get it right.

Rule #1: You can insure risk.
Rule #2: You cannot insure expenses.

In the first case, coverage might be granted with a higher premium, a coverage exclusion or a policy rider. Compare, in life insurance to smoker rates or in casualty insurance to DUI rates. In neither case is there to coverage of the diabetes. In the second case, the risk has become certainty. No insurance is possible (the house is burning situation).

When you figure out the distinction between risk and expense, rephrase so I can tell if you figured it out.

J
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I think the point is that is you start work for IBM and you have a heart condition, you CAN get insurance for treatment for a heart condition. This invalidates your statement, because health insurance works differently because people consider it to be inherently different.
 
Samson said:
I think the point is that is you start work for IBM and you have a heart condition, you CAN get insurance for treatment for a heart condition. This invalidates your statement, because health insurance works differently because people consider it to be inherently different.
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Groups are another complication. Everything so far has been individual coverage. With a group, not everyone has heart condition.

J
 
onejayhawk said:
If the nurse did, she should be fired. More likely, the nurse would say, "I cannot treat your cough right now because that person is bleeding to death."
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I guess I just don't see how your analogy applies.

What is the "cough" and what is the "bleeding to death" in your health policy analysis? To answer this question I would suggest provoding real scenarios where someone ought be denied healthcare because of health policy.

It seems to me from a societal perspective both a cough and bleeding to death should be legitimate causes for anyone to see a health-care professional.
 
onejayhawk said:
Rule #1: You can insure risk.
Rule #2: You cannot insure expenses.
Click to expand...

K, I getcha. I think the two things people were conflating was 'cover' vs 'insure'. And I also think that 'the house burning down' set the wrong imagery. Zelig's 'insure oil changes' example also works. Obviously, you can buy an insurance plan that covers oil changes. But you then have to put quotes around the word 'insurance'.

With health insurance, we tend to package 'benefits plan' with 'insurance plan'. At work, I get $5k and two weeks paid leave if my hand gets chopped off by a saw. Oh, and I also get 3 massage sessions a year.

Now, explain the weakness in Obamacare that you're alluding to? Maybe divide things along 'benefits' vs 'insurance'?

For those of us living under UHC, it would probably be easiest to just say that we have a variety of benefits. Not really insurance (using your parlance)?
 
My employer specifically does not use the term "insurance" to describe our health benefits. The employer pay a health "insurance" company for administration, but the employer pays all the benefit costs directly.

Fixing US health care mostly seems to be possible by sneaking more and more things under the umbrella of "insurance" that aren't really, but that the establishment and corps will grudgingly allow, rather than sensible UHC, but you're stuck with the constant administrative waste overhead of the "insurance" companies.
 
onejayhawk said:
Groups are another complication. Everything so far has been individual coverage. With a group, not everyone has heart condition.

J
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But wait, you just said that insurance companies can't insure pre-existing conditions. Now you're admitting they can?

Look again, for the thousandth time. I understand the technical distinction you're making. What you're not understanding is that the distinction doesn't matter in this discussion. Insurance companies manage millions of newly issued plans every year given to people with pre-existing conditions, some of which are serious and expensive. Saying "They can't insure those expenses, they have to expense them" makes no freaking sense in the confines of this discussion. Where they place it on their balance sheet will affect how they cover the cost, but has NO effect on whether they will be able to plan for and cover the cost.

See, you want to argue a totally irrelevant detail because you think it makes you smarter or something, but it's dumb because it doesn't pertain to the discussion we're having, at all. Health "insurance" is not insurance in any meaningful sense of the word, so discussing "insurance" in this context really means "coverage." Technically el Mac is correct and we are talking about expenses being "covered" by an insurance company, and not strictly costs which are "insured," but you have to understand something - virtually nothing that one uses health insurance to pay for is "insured." So trying to make this distinction in this arena doesn't make any sense - my kids' doctor visits aren't "insured" any more than a guy's heart condition is "insured" when he changes carriers. But my insurance company still manages to cover its share of the expense.

El Mac's example is incredibly helpful. His hand is insured, in the strict sense of the word. If he didn't have a left hand and went to buy insurance on his left hand, that would be an apt analogy to the "insuring a burning house" example you're parroting from the GOP. But that analogy is incredibly poor in a discussion about what is understood as encompassed by "health insurance," something I've explained to you several times now.
 
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The insurance angle can work, if you scope it properly. When talking about health insurance you should be considering a persons whole life. At the start of a life you cannot tell how healthy a life will be. So you can make bets at this points. And that bet can even be won on average, because costs might go down or people live healthier.

However there is one condition necessary for health insurance to work: There must not be a way to lose health insurance. Only then it makes sense to pay more than you need when you are young and healthy with the expectation that you might need more than you pay at the end of your life.
 
metalhead said:
But wait, you just said that insurance companies can't insure pre-existing conditions. Now you're admitting they can? Look again, for the thousandth time. I understand the technical distinction you're making.
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You are not getting the distinction. Look at elMac's post. He's dealing with the same confusion of terminology.

J
 
onejayhawk said:
You are not getting the distinction. Look at elMac's post. He's dealing with the same confusion of terminology.
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If you want to put it that way, fine, the solution is to abolish health insurance entirely and replace it with a scheme to spread the costs of health care treatments among the whole population, which we cannot under any circumstances call insurance because it will allow J to repeatedly dodge the salient points.
 
Lexicus said:
If you want to put it that way, fine, the solution is to abolish health insurance entirely and replace it with a scheme to spread the costs of health care treatments among the whole population, which we cannot under any circumstances call insurance because it will allow J to repeatedly dodge the salient points.
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This is Bernie Sanders Medicare for everyone plan. Pay as you go costs are very high as we do things.

J
 
onejayhawk said:
This is Bernie Sanders Medicare for everyone plan. Pay as you go costs are very high as we do things.

J
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:lol:

Why does everyone but you understand how the distinction you're making is irrelevant to the discussion? We all understand your point. You just don't understand why it is irrelevant.

Moderator Action: Please be civil in your responses, or do not respond at all. This is trolling. FP
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
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