Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim in CT
I hear what you are saying about anti-selection (the correct term is adverse selection). I'm just not sure I see the difference between the impact of individuals getting a year amnesty, versus small businesses. There were relatively few business' impacted by the 1 year delay while there are many many indiv. who would have been impacted (much more than w/the businesses). Given that the individual mandate is really the core of the whole program, w/o those individuals (really the healthy individuals) the whole thing would have fallen apart.
I'm actually in favor of requiring everyone to buy some basic level of insurance. For the reasons you say (many sick people are not responsible for being sick, so it's absolutely fair to pool that cost with those who are healthy). No one chooses to have pancreatic cancer, so I have no problem with pooling the cost of their care with healthy people who merely got lucky. I agree. I would have thought a very high deductible plan with some sort of preventive benefit would have been the way to go. I guess people would complain that they then would be made aware of some illness but still not be able to afford the treatment b/c they have say a $10K deductible.
I just don't like the feds being so involvedvalid point, but I don't know how else to achieve more coverage.. And I don't like the way it was passed ("let's pass the bill, and then we'll see what's in it"). I also don't see why you'd pass health reform without enacting serious and fair tort reform, which is one thing that would actually reduce costs. Nothing in Obamacare can possibly reduce costs, and it was dishonestly marketed as something that would lower costs.
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There are a lot of other things we can do to lower costs (including some sort of tort reform) but they won't be put into law for a # of reasons. in my opinion we're never going to lower costs as long as hospitals/drug companies can charge whatever they want. But you can't stop that in a free market society.