freeman3 wrote:By the way, cognitive dissonance is a fancy phrase, but you're the one that quoted an article saying that employer's costs were going to rise 5-7% percent, that those kinds of increases we're a "fixture", but now employers were claiming that their costs were going up because of the ACA. You quoted that article, I simply examined the implications of that. All I have said is that health care increases have slowed, which is not the same as employer's costs. If you quote an article then it is fair game for me to make reasonable inferences based on the article. So I did not simultaneously say that the ACA reduced costs and that it is not responsible for costs that were coming. What I said was that a reasonable inference from your article was that employer's increases were similar to prior years, but that employers were blaming it on the ACA. Growth in health care costs is not the same as the growth in employer's costs. It is not up to me to prove what your article implies--you cited it.
Is that clear enough....or do I need to bold it?

freeman3 wrote:I agree in principle with the argument that a person should not have to buy coverage they do not need. However, here the government is trying to make sure that with regard to certain coverages that everyone who does need those coverages will get them.

And it may be, I don't know, that carving out certain exceptions for those who don't need the coverage would be more expensive than it is worth.

It also seems to me that if there is a coverage that is not applicable, then the insured should not have to pay for it (the insurer in calculating the risk should take into account that this particular insured is not subject to that risk resulting from an inapplicable coverage). Finally, to the extent insurers are surcharging insureds who have inapplicable coverages, then that is something that presumably could be fixed by passing a "technical improvement" law (however, we know that is not possible under current political conditions)

RJ, I am not sure why the policy cannot be changed, other than perhaps a feeling that such a limitation would discriminate against the poor.

freeman3 wrote:I think we need a new topic...

At this point, I dropped the phone and got online, and there I figured out that my policy was inadequate by A.C.A. standards most likely because it lacked maternity coverage (not so useful for us) and vision coverage (which would be nice for a family of four-eyes, though we’d got used to not having it); there may have been other things in the fine print, too. On the D.C. Health Link, a site that, like most of the state exchanges and unlike healthcare.gov, has worked quite well since the beginning, I did some easy browsing and saw that there were thirty-one plans to choose from, with premiums ranging from $771 to $2,121 a month. On the other hand, the only options for my family that had no deductible, as we currently had, would cost more than the $1,300 we paid currently per month, between about $200 and $800 more, depending on the plan, and would come with a higher limit to our out-of-pocket costs than we presently have—as high as $12,700 (compared with our current $5,000 limit). One plan carried a deductible of $2,600, and the deductibles climbed steeply from there. Someone I know in California told me a similar story by e-mail yesterday: his family’s Kaiser Permanente insurance had gone up by eighty-nine per cent, and now included maternity coverage, which he and his partner, both in their sixties, weren’t figuring on needing. . . .

So yes, I’ll subsidize someone else’s prenatal coverage, in a more effective way than I’ve been doing by default under the current system, in which too many pregnant women show up in emergency rooms without having had such care, creating problems for themselves and their babies, and all sorts of costs for taxpayers. And I’ll remember to be relieved that my own access to health care is guaranteed. But they had better work out the problems with the A.C.A.; if they don’t, and it doesn’t fulfill its promise of insuring the uninsured, I’m really going to feel like a chump.

Ray Jay wrote:

freeman3 wrote:Ellsbury going to the Yankees, Syria; Egypt.

freeman3 wrote:Happy holidays, RJ? Careful, you might offend people who celebrate Christmas and don't need any references to other holidays (this is a major topic at Fox News)...
I guess I won't be trying out for Wheel of Fortune any time soon...
Interesting articles but you do realize that most of us here are only interested in articles that bash the other side, right?!
DF, maybe that liberal was happy because she was helping to save lifes (all other things being equal it is estimated that a person without insurance has a 40 percent greater chance of dying each year, as compared to a person with insurance).http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/18/de ... insurance/

bbauska wrote:Danivon,
I have stated it before, and I will state it again. I grew up DIRT POOR. We had NOTHING! We still had good food, and spent the food stamp coupons (not a faux bank card) on healthy food, because that was all we had. Am I rich now? Not hardly, my friend.

To tie this to the insurance debate, it would be akin to ensuring that everyone had to follow the policies of food stamps, and then paying for the obligation to not get what we want.

If people want to be on food stamps, gov't subsidized insurance, gov't subsidized housing (which I know a great deal about!) or any other gov't subsidized program; fine. Just follow the policies to get the money. If you don't want the policies, don't get on the program. That is the choice I was addressing.

Seems simple.

freeman3 wrote:Well, there are positives and negatives associated with marriage...can't say there any positives associated with not having insurance...